Further Reading

Transcript

EPISODE 100

Hello and welcome to the Partly Political Broadcast, a podcast that combines politics and comedy to form something that is not quite enough of either and thus disappoints everyone all at once. This is episode 100 – YES 100!! FIRE THE 100 EPISODE KLAXON! WHERE’S MY LETTER FROM THE QUEEN? – I’m Tiernan Douieb and if 100 episodes of this show have taught me anything its that last week’s local election results totally proved that your favourite party did great but also its not looking good for them and based on the numbers they’d do brilliantly or terribly in a general election but don’t forget these numbers can’t be compared in that way.

Yes one thing we can definitely say about the local elections is that they happened. Oh and the parliamentary wing of the Daily Mail’s comments section UKIP have all but gone. Yes how hilarious that they’ve gone back to where they came from. Except it seems that where they came from largely was the Conservative party who swept up a lot of those votes. And swept is the correct term for any votes that were swayed by gutter politics. Labour gained the most seats overall and came out with the highest vote share as well as the most councillors, but they didn’t quite grab some of the Conservative strongholds in London such as Barnet or Westminster like they predicted. There are two reasons for this: One is that they kept saying they would in the run up to the election and that’s not very British. If they’d been under confident, muttered about how they’d try their best and then told a sob story about a deceased relative they were doing it for, I reckon the public would’ve gone for it. The other reason is that Barnet has a high Jewish population and the recent anti-Semitism accusations against Labour meant that weren’t going to politically self harm and vote for them. Although saying that they did vote for a Conservative run council which teaches us that perhaps the residents of Barnet actually want to self harm too much, or alternatively that Labour weren’t quite racist enough. How dare you only be prejudicial towards one group of people? Listen Labour, until you’re racist enough to deport British citizens based on their surname and a lack of paperwork, then you’re not the council for Barnet.

Or it seems Pendle in Lancashire where Rosemary Carroll, a woman who looks like she enjoys executing Handmaids in Gilead. After making a racist joke on Facebook last year she was reinstated to ensure the Tories had enough seats to gain control of the council. Rosemary says it was an accident as he had meant to delete the post but published it by accident. Great that makes it even worse. Pendle now have an elected official who not only wanted to hide how racist she is but also lacks the most basic skills needed to use Facebook properly.

The Liberal Democrats, rose from the ashes like a pigeon that accidentally landed in a cigarette bin and gained a number of councils from the Conservatives. Lib Dem leader and Jim Henson’s Storyteller Vince Cable said this proved the Lib Dems can win anywhere. Yeah totally, anywhere except the 141 councils where they didn’t. Its like a child at a global cuisine buffet assuming being able to have spring rolls and a pizza means that they can travel the world. Still it does show the Lib Dems have some hope of stealing seats where the Tories and Labour have burned away support. We no longer have a 2 party system, no, there’s now third party fire and theft. No I’m not sorry. Meanwhile UKIP’s general secretary and worst dressed ugly baby Paul Oakley said on Radio 4 that his party nearly being entirely wiped out meant they were like the Black Death. He said think of the black death in the middle ages. It comes along, causes disruption and then goes dormant, and that’s what we’re going to do. Is he threatening to kill 30-60% of Europe? I mean yes, the very thought of UKIP coming back will probably cause bubous in the groin for many but really I think the only similarity between the Black Death and UKIP now is that in 700 years people will look back at them and think, thank fuck that disease got wiped out, it looked horrible.

Overall everyone claimed some sort of victory while saying everyone else had lost. Labour Leader and only political representative of the Ermine community Jeremy Corbyn told journalists that we had not yet reached peak Corbyn, though I guess that’s because that’s impossible when you’re constantly running downhill. Prime Minister and large gingerbread cottage owner Theresa May made a speech in Wandsworth praising how Conservative councils deliver great local services at lower taxes, which is odd because only 3 months before Conservative lead Northamptonshire council revealed it would be raising taxes because it had run out of money. May might as well have praised her own ability to own up to shitty immigration policies, or their clear Brexit plans, before pogoing away on her increasingly large nose.

Outside of local elections, the new Home Secretary and stunt double for Morph Sajid Javid said that he would leave no stone unturned to find the truth about the Windrush scandal. He then voted on Wednesday, along with 305 other Conservatives against disclosing all the documents regarding those affected to the public. Brilliant. There’s a man who you should never hire to do you a rockery. Now we’ll never read how, allegedly but I’m sure it’s true as I’ve just made it up, Theresa May dresses up as Serco guards to personally deport people, laughing for the entire flight like a super villian. Back in 2015 when pushing the Snooper’s Charter, so that Theresa May could read all your emails and imprison you based on how often you put soz instead of sorry and misuse an apostrophe, back then her and her ministers often said ‘if you’ve got nothing to hide, you’ve got nothing to fear.’ A phrase I hugely resented as I had nothing to hide but still find spiders terrifying. Now in 2018 though, her whole cabinet is like ‘OH GOD DON’T TURN OVER THOSE STONES, THERE IS NOTHING TO SEE HERE.’ They may as well all just shout ‘nothing to see here’ while waving their arms furiously in front of a big graph signed by May with every non-white Brit on it and where she wants to send them to.

Business Secretary and man who’s every thought could be replaced by the noise a fridge makes and made more interesting Greg Clark, told Andrew Marr on his BBC show that a UK-EU customs partnership is still on the table. But he didn’t mention who’s sitting at that table, if the EU have ever been invited for dinner or why Jacob Rees Mogg is sitting underneath it sulking because it’s not what he wants and he’s still angry about being made redundant from Ask Jeeves.

Over in the US, President and the lovechild of a pantomime horse and some rust Donald Trump told the National Rifle Association convention – aka never outgunned but regularly outthought and outmoraled – that an unnamed London hospital is like a warzone because of all the knife crime. Incredible that a draft dodger like Donald assumes war zones are just people knifing each other, which is probably a combination of him watching Fox News and Game Of Thrones at the same time. But to be honest I’m happy for him to believe this. I think we should tell him the streets of London are paved with blood, everyone carries a knife and it’s part of our ancient tradition to knife visitors, then hopefully the overcooked whale penis will be too scared to visit in July. Also the NRA convention had banned guns in the room the president was speaking in, so if only they’d all been carrying knives they could’ve at least pinned him down on a few facts.

Oh and lastly possible date snatching, Brexit and Trump aiding firm Cambridge Analytica has shut down, in order to spend less time with your family, probably. They have, of course, already set up a new company backed by all the same millionaires, called Emerdata which I hope will only be used to data monitor people who live on a farm in the Yorkshire Dales that a plane once crashed into.

ADMIN

Hello you! Wowzers, 100 eps eh? That’s a whole bunch of my life neither me or you will ever get back. Who’d have thought that way back when in January 2016 when I started this show, that politics now in 2018 would be even more disappointing than James Cameron’s upcoming list of films. Back then there hadn’t even been a Brexit referendum, and Donald Trump was just a dickhead on the telly that you could avoid by changing channels or not being rich. But here we are 100 episodes in and there is still content for this show, so you know, every cloud has a silver lining. Even though judging by that content it’s probably actually lead and we’ll all be in trouble if we breath it in.

Anyway, because it’s episode 100, rather than have a guest – which is my clever way of covering up that my guest pulled out because apparently episode 100 isn’t a big deal for everyone, gah– rather than have a guest I thought it’d be more fun to collate all the descriptions I’ve called certain political figures over the past 100 episodes. So to start you off, here is Prime Minister Theresa May:

GOOD BACKGROUND MUSIC

Theresa May is…

Ep1: a woman who’s constantly haunted by all those Dalmatians she had killed
Ep24: Queen Grimhilde with her magic mirror
Ep26: the child catcher from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.
Ep29: charm factor of a hyena wearing an ironic T-Rex tshirt despite not knowing who they are
Ep44: Ghost Of Christmas Future
Ep51: only human being in the world with the sort of eyes you only see on people who are about to turn into zombies
EP54: hollow vessel body for the next Sith Lord
Ep55: barely conscious synth
Ep56: woman who if she took a personality test it wouldn’t register she was there in the first place
Ep59: Paul Nuttall with hair
Ep60: Witchfinder General
Ep61: T-1000 May
Ep62: Maschinenmensch
EP63: early rejected blueprint for a human
EP68: part boom mic part ghost train
EP69: a reject Ghost in The Shell that’s even more disappointing than the recent film one
Ep70: 1 part authoritarian to 3 parts that feeling when you wake up 10 minutes before your alarm goes off
Ep72: product of a dystopian jelly mould
Ep74: only living person to have rigor mortis
Ep75: only human to exhibit gecko like skills for clinging on despite death
Ep77: only person who’s Madame Tussards waxwork has more warmth and personality than them
Ep78: ‘I consider being unable to punch my way through a wet paper bag a sign of strength’
Ep79: only person to be afflicted with a living dead career
Ep80: only person to get an error 404 code when she does a personality test
Ep81: winner of best dressed icicle 2017
Ep82: Try Hard With A Vengeance
Ep84: woman who’s computer password is strongandstable but with letters missing
Ep85: ‘Every day is UK Snow Day In My Heart’
Ep86: only person in the world who’s face stays the same when she eats a lemon
Ep87: old Austrian myth used to scare children
Ep88: anguished mushroom
Ep89: inspiration for the Lori Anderson song Superman. Not because she’s super but because she goes on forever without doing anything much
Ep90: the only person who enjoys going to the dentist
Ep91: perpetually smelling something awful on her own shoe’
Ep92: somehow haunted ghost
EP93: Borg Queen
EP94: vampire constantly reacting to sunlight
Ep94: skin suit wrapped around bonfire remains
Ep97: bone collector
Ep98: everyone’s favourite taxidermied bird of prey, only person for whom the recoil reflex is her default setting
Ep99: catalogue model for Dyno Rod

Hope you enjoyed that. There will be more throughout the episode and because I regularly neglect the Patreon crew, despite their noble efforts sponsoring this podcast, I’ll be popping a special audio file for all donators on there with some of the politicians I haven’t included in this show. If you’d like to join those who’ll receive that, please do head to patreon.com/parpolbro and without sounding too desperate, back when I started the patreon in the distant past I put a very modest target of $200 a month and two years in, I’ve depressingly still not hit that. So if you can spare $1 which I think in GBP is currently 74p – which according to google is the cost of the Smirnova-Chernykh comet, I think that’s right – then please do as it all helps me avoid doing things like driving to the depths of Staffordshire last night to entertain people by a canal and instead have time to make this show better. If you don’t want to do a regular donation, then please do a one off donation to the ko-fi account at ko-fi.com/parpolbro and a big thank you to Tom who sent over one of those today. It’s meant to be the price of a coffee but yesterday I bought a new cold cappuccino thing that cost more than that and was a lot like drinking bubble bath through a straw so I’ll probably use it for something else. To be fair, I probably should’ve just tried to make a beard with it but I think it would’ve scared the person at the till. Big thank you to Rob T, SGP and DaixiChxn for reviews on Stitcher and iTunes. If you have anything to say about this show at all, and by that I mean nice things, then please do give the show a review. I mean there’s been 100 episodes now, even if you just say ‘hey there’s a lot of it’ that will do. Quantity over quality as they say. Well they don’t but sometimes it’s true. I mean if you said I could have 100 Web Person figures or one good Spider-Man figure I’d say I don’t want any of those, I’m not a man-child. And then when no one’s looking take the Spider-Man figure. I can’t remember what my point was. Please just review the show.

As it’s episode 100 I would also like to thank Kat Day who regularly types up all the linear notes for each episode and she does that out of sheer goodwill and brilliance. I’m excited to say that the podcast website is, as my web person tells me, very nearly done so all those linear notes and interviews and everything should be easily searchable if you want to go back and listen to stuff. I’m also aware Web Person sounds like a knock off Spider-Man toy. Your Amiable Local Area Web Person! Also I did ask online what you all wanted for the 100th ep and the public overwhelmingly and by overwhelmingly, I mean about 20 of you, wanted the descriptions, but also a Jingle MegaMix came close. Now I started to put that together but it turns out over 100 episodes, there is over 30 minutes of jingles. So I’ll pop that as a an extra release this week and that way if the thought of me singing some very badly written jingles over shitly mixed Apple Loops excites you then you can listen through that and say things like ‘wow that doesn’t even rhyme’ or ‘god the first 55 episodes he released on that shitty old mic sound like someone’s talking to me through a rolled up newspaper’. You know, exciting things like that. You’re welcome.

Only other bit of admin this week is that if you live in Hastings, or near Hastings or have heard of Hastings from a book or a battle then on May 25th I am hosting one hell of an amazing bill at De La Warr Pavilion for Mark Thomas and Friends, a show Mark has set up to raise money for the brilliant Hasting Furniture Service who help people furnish their homes affordably. The tickets are £20 or £15 concessions and the line up, listen to this is: Daniel Kitson, Robin Ince, Bridget Christie, Jonny and the Baptists, Shazia Mirza, Mark Thomas of course, and then me compereing the whole thing just to ruin it. You can grab tickets on the De La Warr Pavilion site which is www.dlwp.com. Don’t miss the L out or you’ll end up getting a fit for work assessment you didn’t want.

On this week’s show, as I said, no guest, just my still croaky voice. Yes it’s still croaky. Yes I’ve tried everything, yes I then ruined that by having a beer and shouting a lot. Yes I am an adult, yes my daughter should be terrified that I can’t even look after myself. Anyway, just me but I’ll be looking into them local election results, a little bit of Brexit and this week the headlines are back too! But before even them, have a little bit of this:

SOME GOOD BACKGROUND MUSIC

Jeremy Corbyn is…

Ep1: fashion inspiration for geography teachers everywhere
Ep4: somehow manages to be unpopularly popular and popularly unpopular all at once
Ep8: one man vintage clothing outlet
Ep23: ‘I bet he plays bowls’
Ep29: Allotment lover who’s lost his plot
Ep30: J-Corbz aka Jezza Corbster aka Jeremy from the Block
Ep41: Bernard Cribbins body double
Ep45: MumbleBore the Wizard
Ep47: Quentin Blake drawing
Ep49: Hipster Radagast
Ep51: 2016 Scruffts finalist
Ep55: Old Man Marley stand-in
Ep56: man who looks like he travels round schools to tell them about the importance of harvest
Ep57: what would happen in Hemingway wrote a novel about an allotment owner that had to fight a giant courgette
Ep60: man who’s name sounds like someone being excited by rubbish
Ep61: quarter womble
Ep62: ‘I can’t believe he doesn’t own a narrow boat’
Ep63: official Japanese mascot for garden centres
EP66: a man who plays the game Risk by throwing all the figurines in the bin and popping a potted plant on the board instead
Ep69: human terrier
Ep70: captain of the Pequod
Ep72: former puppeteer of Sooty
Ep75: Jack White’s current main source of income
Ep77: what happens if you anthropomorphise a loaf of Soreen
Ep78: 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
Ep81: besuited stoat
Ep84: man who’s password is about 4 paragraphs worth of characters but he insists his computer shouldn’t work for a few
Ep86: only parliamentary representative from Donaldson’s Dairy
Ep88: stunt double for Stanley Tucci in Captain America
Ep89: unfun-sized Papa Smurf
Ep91: Captain SideEye
Ep92: Steve Zissou and the Life Erratic
Ep94: pinto bean with eyes
Ep95: regular extra for old French children’s books
Ep96: I have special shoes for gardening
Ep97: if you bring me 10 rushrooms I’ll reward you with 100 rupees
Ep98: toothbrush in a suit
Ep99: Charlie’s Grandpa Joe

HEADLINES

MONEY LAUNDERING – LYCAMOBILE

Last week the Commons voted on an amendment to the Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Bill. Yes only five whole long years since former Prime Minister and withered balloon David Cameron said he would no longer tolerate the dodgy cash fuelling the UK housing boom, before then making sure the UK was one of the few countries that didn’t abide by anti-money laundering measures that the UK set in the first place and then running away because of pig rumours and his insistence for the UK have a vote to shoot him in the face. Sorry, I went off track there. This amendment would have forced British overseas territories like the Cayman Islands to publish registers of who owns what assets in the UK, basically a lovely long list of which Conservative donors own what and how that’s affecting everything.

Yes I’m being facetious, but this vote came just weeks after it was revealed the British government refused to help a French investigation into suspected money laundering and tax fraud by Lycamobile, you know that company who always advertise over the shops that no one really knows what they sell. Is it an internet café? Or a front for a drugs business? Or a holiday agency that only has one location with a picture that looks like it’s been cut from a label for a lilo? No one knows. The investigation happened over two years ago and French authorities, by which I assume they mean Inspector Clouseou arrested 19 people for laundering money from organised criminal networks. However when Clouseau, probably, gave a formal request to carry out raids in London for the investigation, it was blocked by the British government because, as they stated, the company is the biggest corporate donor to the Conservative Party. Oh it’s illegal is it? Thing is, we really like our fancy lunches, so do you reckon you could just, you know, not tell anyone. And if you could leave Thanos alone please because he regularly sends us hilarious GIFs that we love chuckling at, and maybe lay off SPECTRE because we always get invited to their Christmas parties and they have the best nibbles.

This new amendment to the bill was put forward by a group of MPs including 19 Conservative backbenchers, with the hopes that once we leave the EU and the Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering bill comes into place to fight against illicit money flows, that this would add extra transparency in the fight against tax evasion. But it didn’t go through so that now, won’t happen. 303 Conservatives, 10 DUP MPs and 1 independent candidate voted against all the other parties for a majority of 13 to block the amendment. GUYS! If you’ve got nothing to hide, you’ve got nothing to…guys? Guys? It’s like they’re not even trying anymore. Still at least now we can all remain completely ignorant as to whether or not those luxury flats near you are actually owned by imperial forces or not. We are smashing this money laundering thing as a country. I get the sneaking suspicion that post Brexit the UK tourist board’s main lure will be sending out do it yourself treasure maps to international criminals. Or at least just sell them at one of those dodgy lycamobile shops replete with free lilo.

GOOD BACKGROUND MUSIC

NIGEL FARAGE is…

Ep22: his face like a cow’s stomach that’s been blowtorched badly
Ep23: face like a squid carcass stuffed full of plastic testicles, your face like a shaved pug that’s been stretched over a baboon’s arse
Ep26: Former UKIP leader but eternal twat
Ep30: like someone scrawled a face on a tumour
Ep33: professional smegma
Ep37: goiter with a face, 99% racist mouth and 1% a face that looks like someone filled the carcass of a frog with dung balls
Ep39: blabby mouthed conman
Ep40: blob fish face
Ep45: Autopsied carp
Ep46: primordial boozer
Ep49: amphibian in a wind tunnel
Ep53: a man who were he given a penny for his thoughts, he’d be bankrupt on account of all the refunds people would want plus compensation, the 1% of bacteria Domestos can’t kill
Ep59: waste of skin
Ep65: acid damaged Boglin
Ep71: haunted Toby Jug in a suit
Ep74: populist barnacle
EP81: sick bucket with a face
Ep86: third degree gravity victim
Ep91: rice pudding skin wrapped around a jizz sock
Ep92: Gaping face wound

LOCAL ELECTION RESULTS

Last Thursday I walked round to our local Kurdish Community Centre where they kindly host the polling stations now that our local school made it clear all these elections were taking the piss. Yes I too think our current democracy is affecting children’s education but I hadn’t realised it’s just because every bloody year there’s at least one vote. It’s like an annual event, I’m surprised there isn’t a petition for it to be a bank holiday and all the tabloids are telling us to have shamlelessly nationalistic street parties to celebrate. That’s it, get the tressle tables out, tablecloths made of the parties manifestos, and a variety of different coloured jelly and ice creams to encourage you and your neighbours to shout at each other about who’s wrong politically in the street in person and not just online. Anyway I went along, I popped a small cross in a box like you would if you were organising a funeral for a hamster, and I voted for who I believed in, which is why Odin the Allfather got at least one vote in my area. You may have had them near you, or just as likely, not, as there are 124 local councils that don’t have elections due till 2020 and 35 local authorities that won’t have any elections till 2021, by which point it’ll be past Brexit transition phase and voting will probably have been removed in place of battle duels to determine who’s the mightiest and shall lead. And that’s one of the reasons why these recent local elections can’t actually tell you much about anything. There was much media coverage on what these votes mean for an upcoming general election, with the sky news Thrasher projection saying it’d mean a hung parliament with Conservatives on 305 votes, Labour on 261, SNP on 35, Lib Dem on 26 and other on 23, meaning either the Tories or Labour would have to get more than just the DUP to prop them up. And that’s a weird one because Scotland weren’t having local elections so not sure how they predicted the SNP seats, though it could be because let’s face it, they’ll almost certainly have 35 seats as Scotland is theirs now and one day I assume we’ll find out they’ve just been severing the ground between it and England with the hope of floating off for natural independence. The BBC Projection said it would be Labour in the lead at 283 votes, Conservatives at 280, Lib Dem at 22 and other, including SNP at 65. Again leaving a well hung parliament because everyone will have been severely dicked.

But really we can’t be sure about any of that because this vote didn’t include so many areas that in a general election are included, and it didn’t count for low voter turnout because no one cares about local elections or for people voting in a way that will affect them locally rather than nationally because BINS and some people voting nationally instead of locally because the way some of our local bin men shout they could probably stop Brexit by just yelling at everyone involved at 6am everyday and wearing them down. But here are some things we can actually know.

Labour gained an 8% swing with 77 extra councillors which sounds pretty good, but overall they didn’t actually gain the controls of any councils once you take into consideration gains and losses and their vote share looks set to be 35% which is the same as the Conservatives. Where they made some interesting gains such as Plymouth which was a heavily leave voting area, these were cancelled out by a lack of gains in London in areas such as Barnet that while it has always been a Conservative strong hold since 1964, Labour stated that they had a good chance there. Similarly Westminster where Labour came close by increasing their vote share by 7.6% and had 41.1% compared to the Conservatives 42.8%, or Wandsworth where they actually got more votes than the Conservatives but failed to get enough seats for overall control. So you’re probably thinking they’ve gained votes, increased vote share that sounds good. Yeah except they built it up by saying they could take those places which puts fear into Tory voters and drives them to the polling stations, plus when they don’t win them makes it seem like a bigger loss, especially against a government who have spent the last few weeks trying to justify a policy called Hostile Environment which would only sound good if it was an ITV game show where reality TV stars are pitted against irate snakes and lions.

So why did Labour lose the vote? Well several signs in Barnet point to all the cases of anti-Semitism within the party which mean Corbyn’s slow speed at dealing with it has cost votes, but there is also the party’s Brexit stance which is still more unclear than Flint’s water supply. Near me in Haringey Labour got overall control, but Lib Dems took the councils in the most affluent areas of Crouch End, Muswell Hill and Highgate, so is that due to Labour being too left wing now and them having centrist preferences? Or because the last Labour council brought in the Haringey redevelopment vehicle and they didn’t research that the new Labour candidates were against it? Or maybe they just really like butter and so Lib Dems helped them check that with handy leaflets they could hold under their chin? Who knows. The Conservatives did well in heavy leave voting constituencies which might suggest for Labour to take that vote they need a stronger Brexit attitude, but then the Lib Dems picked up mostly Conservative remain areas so should Labour pursue those more or would they never go for a more left wing party anyway leaving more open to the Lib Dems in the future? I have no idea, what do you think I am? Some sort of clever clogs? Clogs are made of wood, they’re all idiots. But I do wonder if even if Labour came out and said ‘we have one Brexit strategy that we all agree on and it’s to rename our country Belgium 2’ that some clarity may well help them out. I mean that’s not a good plan. Apart from the chocolate obvs.

Oh and Labour MP who is worth more because he’s still in his original plastic container Chukka Ummuna has already called for an inquiry into the local election campaign because he said the advances expected at this stage in the electoral cycle have failed to materialise. And sure, maybe he’s right because it’s not the usual gains an opposition would make but there also hasn’t been Brexit before and you do wonder how much help a party mainly opposing itself has too. It looks like this may well be another opportunity for those in the party that dislike Corbyn to try and oust him yet again because what’s more fun than challenging the government? That’s right, kicking yourself in the face until your teeth bleed. No wonder Ummuna’s kept his casing on.

And really even that analysis isn’t very good because the main way to look at last week’s election is that no one is going anywhere. Labour and the Conservatives are both not quite getting enough votes to lead in front of each other and you start to wonder what that will mean when it does come to a general election? A hung parliament like last time yet again, the Lib Dems sneaking in and cleaning up enough to become king makers again, Jezza and Theresa realising that if you can’t beat them join them and end up romancing each other in Number 10 with a new party called Labservatives or Consabour where all their policies cancel each other out and the UK lives in limbo for 4 years until we’re saved by a candidate who’s so out there they aren’t left or right wing but straight up the middle with a twist or something? I have no idea.

UKIP have gone, down 123 seats and only gaining 3 councillors because it seems people in Derby are either awful or have a very dark sense of humour and like to waft a carrot in front of the bigoted donkey’s nose in the hope it’ll run to exhaustion and die. Most of their vote share went to the Conservatives aka NewKip. I mean damn that must hurt. You come up into the game with your new fangled racist policies thinking no one’s on that tip and bam, the old school party take your game and play it harder. I mean where have UKIP got to go now Conservatives are deporting even British citizens? They either have to slither back to their bogholes or emigrate which would make them immigrants then they’d have to hate themselves, or come back with even crazier policies where they deport all pets that didn’t originate in the UK and campaign to leave the United Kingdom. Which actually might make them quite popular in Scotland. The Greens gained 8 seats including one in Oxford City Council for a man called Dick Wolff, because how could you not elect that man? Imagine having a Dick Wolff in your council? He must be the only person in the world who’s porn name – you know mother’s maiden name and pet name – is less porn than his own. Unless that is his porn name. But which is his pet and which is…never mind.

Oh and it seems that the Voter ID checks in the 5 boroughs they were trialled in meant just under 4000 people were turned away from voting. Would their votes have made any difference to the outcomes in those areas? Unlikely but if 1.5-2% of the voting population is denied a vote, that’s not very democratic is it? You may as well say only people with daschunds can vote or only people who climb a tower of spikes. Ok not really but there’s also no way of saying how many people didn’t bother to vote because they thought they didn’t have the right ID. Labour are calling for the Conservatives to scrap the policy and I agree. Scrap it completely but then replace it with the Voight Kampff test they give to possible replicants in Blade Runner. I mean its probably not very fun and stupidly time consuming but then at least Theresa May wouldn’t be able to vote in her constituency.

GOOD BACKGROUND MUSIC

DAVID DAVIS is….
Ep28: and a man who acts and looks like someone is constantly firing a hairdryer in the face of a sad sheep
Ep33: man so bad they almost named him twice but gave up
Ep41: tired cloud
Ep47: silver vole
Ep53: emoji for contradiction
Ep54: tormented albino gerbil
Ep65: personification of the void, ‘I constantly have the theme tune from Bullseye playing in my head’
Ep66: barely sentient fog patch
Ep67: definitive proof that humanity is not the most intelligent species
EP69: man who always looks like he’s just woken up in the garden after going to sleep in the spare room
Ep70: man who probably read the full story of Icarus and came to the conclusion he could probably make his own wings out of newspaper and sticky tape and be fine, like a work experience kid that really wished he’d put down his choices of placement as football club or binman instead
Ep72: depressed soufflé
Ep73: mouldy prawn cracker
Ep77: what if wool was stupid, confused uncle
Ep81: man entirely composed of the bits you have to pull off tangerines under the skin
Ep82: man who looks like he could be erased with one swipe of a de-bobbler
EP83: mouldy cornflake
Ep84: man who’s computer password is definitely his own name but he still forgets it
Ep85: a man who is parliament’s bag of polystyrene balls in that he’s also useless, polluting, light in substance and yet somehow very hard to get rid of
Ep88: man entirely made of the stuff left behind when you remove a sticker but it tears a bit
Ep89: sentient bellybutton fluff
Ep90: dropped yoghurt
Ep92: badly whisked egg whites
Ep97: a man who looks like he’d get confused by his own reflection

BREXIT FALLOUT

A quixit this week because well, yet again, no one knows anything, nothing has really happened except everyone complaining that no one knows anything with Remainers saying he why don’t we all do something sensible and extreme Brexiteers saying ‘waaaaahhh why don’t you just do all these impossible things and why didn’t you cut my sandwiches into triangles and where is my mum?’ I mean I’m paraphrasing, obviously. But tomorrow night aka Tuesday aka if you’re listening to this on Wednesday last night aka if you’re listening to this on Thursday why are you so slow? On Tuesday the House of Lords will vote on a series of amendments to try and find a customs deal between the UK and the EU with Theresa May insisting there will be no sort of customs union but Greg Clark saying it’s not off the table and Rees Mogg wetting himself and Ireland and Northern Ireland waving and hoping someone notices.

Similarly on the Labour side pressure is on Corbyn to say just what on earth they want. Are they all budding up with Rees Mogg because even Lord Snooty had some scruffy friends or is it time to be sensible and have a clear strategy that perhaps lines us up for not total economic mayhem. Former Trade Minister Gareth Thomas is launching a parliamentary bid for a public vote on the final Brexit deal which hey look, I’m all for the people having more say but do you really trust them on that? Most can’t be bothered to read a tweet properly let alone what various customs and trade deals mean and they are far far more boring than say, my banging tweets. Labour peer Lord Alli, formerly prince, has accused the leadership of complete cowardice for not supporting the Lords amendment to keep the UK in the EEA like Norway, but this was countered by Shadow International Trade Secretary Barry Gardiner who said doing that would reduce the UK to being a rule taker. And he’s not wrong in that we wouldn’t have any say over any changes to the single market or customs union but would have to keep to all rules while paying to be part of them. That’s not great but who knows what any newly created deal would have as judging by negotiations are going so far, it’ll probably include us only being allowed food when we ring a bell.

So again the two main parties have no clear stance on what next despite the fact that next is a really important bit and Ireland and Northern Ireland are still pressed up against a rainy window like Fieval hoping someone cares. What we do know is that whatever happens next, someone will be unhappy, and frankly I hope it’s Jacob Rees Mogg because everytime he smiles I assume he’s just buried someone under his patio and feel a bit ill.

BORIS JOHNSON

Ep22: blonde munster, offspring of a bag of piglets and Worzel Gummidge
Ep23: British politics’s own Wreck-It-Ralph, Blonde guinea Pig with an unfortunate talking arse growth
Ep31: thatched roof on top of uncooked dough
Ep32: Eton Mess, Squidgy tube with hair
Ep34: host body for a mop head
Ep38: looks like the stuff you find in your jeans pocket after a wash but with a face
Ep45: mutant belly button fluff
Ep52: human dust brush
Ep55: star of 1992 film Beethoven, the man for whom the waaaa waaaa waaa trumpet noise was invented
Ep58: chicken hearted dunderheaded nincompoop
Ep61: unhinged flump
Ep62: who overstuffed the taxidermied llama, I’ve had too many Berocca’s’
EP65: bag of giblets attached to a feather duster
Ep66: combination of a bunion and some pissy straw
Ep67: most well known for his role as Sadsack in the Raggy Dolls children’s show
Ep69: first successful cross of a golden retriever with a large dull thudding sound
Ep70: condom filled with porridge, useless wind sock full of blamanche, hairy sandbag of disappointment, self hating potato
Ep73: lovechild of Bagpuss and an old jar of lemon curd
Ep74: happy slapped uncooked dough
Ep75: PennyUnwise The Clown
Ep76: overripe potato
Ep81: arse blancmange
Ep82: walking concussion
Ep86: jumble sale in a suit
Ep87: soft play area gargoyle, Boris fucking Johnson
Ep88: what if someone shaved Bungle from Rainbow
Ep90: Marjory the Trash Heapbarnier
Ep91: Forest Lump
Ep91: animated pork bun
Ep93: concussed haystack
Ep94: T-Bone Steak That Someone Punched Eyes Into
Ep95: water wiggly filled with lard
Ep96: 4000 slugs in a trench coat
Ep97: Punch-bag made of overripe plums

POST TRUTH

Not had a post truth section for ages but I just wanted to read this out in light of the recent Windrush Scandal and the fact that the government have quite openly voted to keep their documents on it all, private. I really just don’t get how they think that’s a good look. I mean what are in those files that they really don’t want us to see? I bet Theresa May’s original racist van had some sort of siren wailing get out while she drove it around dressed as the child catcher from chitty chitty bang bang or something. On top of that vote, they snuck out on Friday during local election results that G4S, the company that if written on a tree would sound like a love note but instead are champions of failure, have had their contract to run Brook House immigration removal centre extended for two more years. That’s despite a whole ton of footage that showed their guards choking detainees. Nine staff were suspended but current detainees say the abuse continued after that happened too and there are reports of detainees being locked up for 13 hours a day. Can you imagine if G4S did staff the Olympics like they were meant to? Anyone competing from a non-UK team probably wouldn’t have made it into the grounds.

Anyway this letters section that rarely happens because none of you ever send me anything. So so lonely. But I wanted to read an account from a listener that I promised to anonymise that really shows you how many people this is affecting and just how shitty it all is. So here you go:

Hi Tiernan, Thanks for the immigration pod.

(Episode 97 – Mia Sullivan)

Really good. I’m not sure people realise just how bad it is. Don’t remember if I told you about my father in law but… – He came here from Ecuador when things weren’t great there – He’s been here decades – No one he knows lives in Ecuador – His British wife, children and grandchildren are all British…. –
He finally got round to formally applying for a passport. They told him to report in every couple of weeks. Then one afternoon, they handcuffed him, took him to a prison cell in London bridge, left him there till midnight, then at midnight transferred him to an old Victorian prison in Dorset. At 4am they then interviewed him.
He sat there for a few months. We visited and did all we could, notified newspapers, got letters of support for him to stay, a decent lawyer (that’s another vile scam, there are immigration lawyers out there that deliberately keep the process going as long as possible to get more money)…
They confirmed that he’d committed no crime, done nothing wrong but didn’t have the right paperwork. Lost their side of course! They told him he would be deported. He could accept the decision, go to Ecuador for a year and come back and apply for UK passport on the basis that all his family are British OR stay and challenge the decision to deport and risk being barred from entering the UK for 10y!
He has young grandchildren (we contributed a 2yo daughter) . So took option 1.
The whole process was incredibly traumatic, cruel and served no obvious purpose. No one benefited; even the government wasted a load of money. In fact the only winners are the security firms running the process. Following the money, this could be what’s driving all this. He’s back now and life is almost back to normal. When he has his passport, we will fully relax…. and seriously look for retribution and justice for the maltreatment. My wife cries every time she sees the news on windrush.
Anyway, thanks again for the pod. Very good. I genuinely think if more people knew how disgustingly the UK government treatments fellow human beings in our name, we’d all be truly ashamed.

Thanks for writing in anonymous person and truly sorry that your father in law had to go through that. It’s seriously grim and I’m genuinely amazed that it didn’t hit the Conservatives votes last week or that there aren’t regular protests about it but I do think it’s because partly that not enough people know about it and that sadly the current conversation on immigration is still that it’s a negative thing. If you want to help do something about it do go back and listen to episode 97 and the many places Mia recommends you can help and donate to the Soas Detainee Support as they are entirely voluntary and need donations asap.

DONALD TRUMP IS…

Ep4: broken wind sock being humped by a shiatsu
Ep8: Best Unwanted Howling Baboon Tribute act
Ep20: melanoma with a face, hairy melanoma
Ep26: angry racist Satsuma
Ep29: racist blister
Ep31: he constantly looks like he is burning up with something you only get from having sex with something he found in a skip
Ep33: the man who were Sigmund Freud to have delved into his mind, he’d have described him as a ‘gargantuan orange arsehole’, Captain Bouffant McTwat
Ep37.5: KKK endorsed, celebrity Christingle
Ep40: troll king
Ep42: the real life version of how Pixar might animate the wind
Ep44: bloated orange head of America
Ep45: Fucking cartoon
Ep46: the Tangerine Nightmare, a man who would struggle to beat a chicken at Boggle
Ep47: Annoying Orange, alternative Blob Fish
Ep48: batshit fuzz pumpkin, American Pat Butcher
Ep51: radioactive edam
Ep52: Hate Gibbon, ulcer with a wig
Ep53: only man to survive being bitten by a radioactive hi-vis jacket
Ep55: Teratoma in a suit, a sense of conviction weaker than Harrison Ford’s flying abilities
Ep56: man who looks like he’s barely survived a nuclear fall out already
Ep58: Cheese Puff Eruption
Ep59: Neon Verruca
Ep60: Ambergris with features
Ep61: silly putty rolled in fluff
Ep63: twat pumpkin
Ep64: atomic kumquat
EP68: animated bowl of pot pourri
Ep69: confused Edam ball
Ep71: constant warning as to why you should all wear sunscreen
Ep74: only known child of the Mother of Vinegar
Ep76: what happens if you don’t lance a boil
Ep77: public health warning about why you shouldn’t give the Lorax crystal meth
Ep78: the missing link between a stomach ulcer & a blobfish
Ep83: porridge filled wind sock
Ep84: man who’s computer password is whatever it writes when you bang tiny hamfists on a keyboard because shouting at it doesn’t work
Ep85: Dayglo Eric Cartman
Ep86: balloon filled with semolina
EP87: aka the Badyear Blimp
EP88: congealed custard sculpture of a Belgian Griffon dog with under-bite
Ep89: croissant attached to a turkey
Ep92: what it would look like if there was a Japanese Mascot for haemorrhoids
Ep93: what happens if you leave a cup-a-soup out for too long
Ep94: Glengarry Glen Gross
Ep95: swollen jellybaby, dried apricot with horror teeth
Ep98: untreated ulcer
Ep99: physical manifestation of heartburn

END

And that is all for this week’s 100th Episode of Partly Political Broadcast. Thank you for listening because without you, well, I’d just be wailing into a corner of my flat once a week and I worry our baby daughter would feel like she has unnecessary competition. Sorry for the lack of interview but next week the interviews return so I hope you do too. Don’t forget if you have any thoughts or comments or anything at all about issues you’d like me to feature or interview someone about, please do get in contact at partlypoliticalbroadcast@gmail.com or the Parpolbro Twitter or partly political facebook group that I am still crap at using. Please also do donate to the Patreon, come on let’s get to a measly $200 or the ko-fi and give the show a lovely review on iTunes, Stitcher, OhPod, HairyCastard, Audio Wang or any others I’ve just made up.

Big thank you to Acast for letting this podcast crash on their sofa for such a long time without paying any rent or doing the washing up and to my brother The Last Skeptik for all of the tunes. He has a new track out with the amazing Kojey Radical. It’s called Look Like and is part of his upcoming album called Under The Patio, so do grab that.

This week’s show will be back next week when Sajid Javid vows to make sure there are no plans to block out the sun, before joining Conservatives to vote to not release documents to the public that may or may not show plans for a giant robot Theresa May head to float in the sky and only give solar rays to those who pay for them.

BYEEEEEEEEE

This week’s show was brought to you by Paul Oakley’s positive greetings cards. Missing a loved one? With Paul Oakley’s cards you can tell them how much they remind you of the Black Death. Need to express thanks to a special friend or relative? Use Paul’s special cards to say how their help was like a dose of smallpox. Need to send a special congratulations wedding card? Look no further as Paul Oakely’s line of ‘Congratulations you pair of dysentery infected lepers’ should do just the trick.

GOOD BACKGROUND MUSIC

LIAM FOX is…

Disgraced MP Liam The Disgrace Fox, The Disgrace

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