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Transcript

Ep124

WILHELM’S SCREAM

INTRO

Hello and welcome to the Partly Political Broadcast, the podcast that usually laughs in the face of politics but this week it mostly wails in despair shouting ‘stop, stop its already dead!’ This is episode 124, I’m Tiernan Douieb and while I would usually start this show with a joke about a political story of the past week, today I want to mention how the NASA Voyager 2 probe has successfully left the solar system and after the past week of politics, I’ve never been more jealous of a spacecraft in my life.

Oh, let’s just chuck this jingle in right now eh?

BREXIT FALLOUT JINGLE

Prime Minister Theresa May aka Thicarus, made a statement to the Commons entitled ‘Exiting the European Union’ a title that would only have been positive if it was about her personal plans to give up, piss off and live on an entirely different continent. But instead it was to tell MPs that no vote on a bad deal is better than a meaningful vote on a bad deal or something like that, as she delayed MPs getting a chance to make it official that her plan was as popular as a Christmas present from your distant Aunt who insists on finding out nothing about you and sending something that makes everyone nauseous when you unwrap it. May announced in her usual under confident I’m about to cry voice that she had to defer the vote because there was no agreement on the backstop, which is true because Brexiteers still don’t want any insurance for Northern Ireland as then they’d have to be named as main drivers and except some responsibility if there’s a horrendous crash. Meanwhile Remainers don’t want the backstop because it’s not something that allows them to go back in time and stop all of this like an actually answerable Baby Hitler problem.

But…stop, rewind, yeah that’s me with only a few strands of hair left after spending today pulling them out every time there was a breaking news update. How did we get to this entirely unsurprising situation in a current political climate where it would only be a shock if someone did something remotely competent and I mean the bar is so low that all it would take is for someone to report that lovechild of an estate agent and a bassoon Dominic Raab hadn’t stopped in his stride to lick a plug socket and I’d be speechless. Where were the many constant signs that were all triangular ones with cascading rocks or at least an angry looking animal?

Well let’s take it back, way back, back into time. Well only last Tuesday, but let’s be honest, that now feels like so long ago it should probably already be written into a tapestry if it wasn’t so certain that someone would make a historically inaccurate comment about it for their own Brexit belief within a matter of minutes. On Tuesday Parliament found the government to be in contempt of parliament. Something that, yes, does seem like the next natural step after 8 years of constantly being in contempt of the public. This means the UK government are the first in history to achieve such a ruling, and despite it really being whatever the opposite of an achievement is, I’m pretty sure they’ll still boast about it at the next Conservative Conference before pointing out how the last Labour government couldn’t manage it even over the Iraq War. That was one of three votes they lost in the Commons in what from now on will likely be referred to you as ‘HA HA’ Tuesday, with the other major one being MPs backing the Commons having a say in the Brexit deal if May continues to be more pointless than an apology from Kevin Hart. So, if MPs do vote against her deal whenever it happens if it does, then it’ll be down to parliament to sort it out. And if they fail, I think it’s the winner of Strictly who’s next in charge, then I think it’ll just be the 3^rd prize in a meat raffle after which it’ll be down to the first magpie that’s seen after January 2^nd. Or something. The Contempt Of Parliament vote was of course because government had refused to divulge the full Brexit legal advice despite a Commons vote in November saying they had to, because there’s nothing like a government fighting for sovereignty when they don’t even want to respect how their own system works. I’m now certain there is a Conservative code book that lists all the terms that mean the reverse of what they sound like, including things like, you know, ‘affordable housing’ and ‘James Cleverly’.

The legal advice was published on Wednesday and it turns out there was a reason the government didn’t want to release it. Who knew? I mean I had just assumed that they had held back a report against parliaments wishes because you know, hey they’ve got enough reading already, or it was on very sharp paper and no one wants a paper cut in December. But no, it turns out, unsurprise, that they were just being deceitful, as the full advice said that May’s backstop plan could risk a stalemate and no that’s not just a fair way to describe her husband Philip May, but instead that the UK could be caught in it indefinitely. Oh god, imagine that. Being caught in safe mode when it the other option is your computer crashes and just before it dies it sends your internet history to all your friends and family.

May then spent the entire week churning out really hollow rhetoric, in order to persuade the public who also aren’t getting a vote on her deal anytime soon, to back her deal. Which doesn’t even make sense. Most of the British public can’t be arsed to click a poll on Twitter let alone write to their MP because the Prime Minister said something shit while visiting a fishery. Its further proof she has no idea how the public work. I’m waiting for her campaign encouraging people to send a telegram to their representative or I dunno, calling them via a landline. For her campaign May wheeled everything out. There was ‘Nothing’s Off the Table’ a phrase hoping to persuade MPs that there might be flexibility on the Irish backstop, but what it actually sounds like is that she can’t be arsed to clear all the crap that was already on the table. Her deal is unappetizing at the best of times but trying to digest it off of unwashed plates covered in old inedible Brexits no one wanted the first time round, didn’t really work. Then there was the whole ‘the message I’ve heard is that people want us to get on with it’ which she assumes was about Brexit but it could also an instruction they bellow whenever she makes a speech because it’s so mind numbingly awful or perhaps to someone else in the vicinity who is willing to execute them so they don’t have to listen to May anymore. So many possibilities. Of course, the big favourite was been May wheeling out the ‘vote for my deal or risk uncertainty’ gem, because history has shown how well that worked out for her predecessor and beef pate in a dog poo bag David Cameron hasn’t it? May’s guarantee of certainty seems to be that if her deal is voted for then we’ll certainly get a Brexit that no one on either side of the eternal debate will like, or you can face the uncertainty of sure a no deal but also possibly a Brexit maybe not happening or a new government. I mean, that’s two out of three better options. Its Russian Roulette versus a guaranteed shot in the face with an otherwise useless London Mayoral water cannon. It’s like saying accept this sandwich I have made with my own turds or you may have to have the turds without bread, or you know, just not have anything or get someone to take me away and lock me up for all my weird turd sandwich peddling. More details of the lack of prep about a no deal now include the M20 in Kent becoming full of stationary traffic for at least 6 months while the Dover customs port is sorted out. With Kent supposedly the garden of England and the M20 becoming a parking lot, a No Deal now sounds like the worst possible cover of Big Yellow Taxi.

5 days of debates on May’s vote started in the Commons and while they only made it to 3 days before everything they were discussing was made pointless like a tiresome series reset where they decided actually it was all a dream, or in this case, an endless night terror where the audience are unable to do anything about it despite witnessing what feels like actual badly written horror. The other way Brexit is similar to a series reset is that would also keep having new characters in to play parts we already know, only in this case the Prime Minister appears to be a truly shit casting director. Is there anything she can do? But those 3 days of debates weren’t pointless because they provided parliament and various interviewers during the week comments that were a level of stupidity a show runner or scriptwriter could only dream of.

Former Foreign Secretary and only man who’s DNA test says he’s directly related to primordial ooze Boris Johnson told the commons that we may be down 1-0 at this stage of the negotiation with the EU but we can still win 2-0. Though on the surface it seems like only a comment a massive idiot could make, because it is, it also wouldn’t surprise me if Boris played sports by gaslighting the other team by insisting their goals just never happened. Later in the week Boris insisted that removing the backstop from the deal would be easy to do, again seemingly sounding ignorant because, well, it is. But I wouldn’t be surprised if Boris has only ever negotiated by spilling a bottle of tip-ex over bits he doesn’t like before trying to snort the rest of it. Why anyone would take negotiating tips from a man who managed to get a British woman a longer prison sentence in Iran than she already had because he forgot what job she did, is beyond me. I’m fairly certain if the deal was up to him, he’d somehow get the UK a deal that cost even more than May’s and involved special controls that were mainly in place to stop other world leaders from ever having to talk to him again. Then again all Boris’s comments could’ve been all over the place because he’s an idiot, or it could be because his mind was on having to apologise to the Commons for failing to declare £52k of income from his Telegraph column and other sources. But then it also isn’t unlike Boris not to mention things that he thinks will land in his favour, such as actual facts or the truth. An unnamed fan of BoJo in the Conservative Party, which I think means it was him putting on a funny voice, likened him to Aslan from the Narnia stories, though I’m certain they just mean he often hides in wardrobes in the hope of making friends with children who will be his intellectual equals.

After Boris, it was the turn of Disgraced MP Liam The Disgrace Fox The Disgrace who accused the Commons of trying to steal Brexit from the British Public. Firstly, taht shows he still has no idea about how parliament works and secondly, it really makes you wonder why he’s upset about them supposedly stealing Brexit from you all, but stealing taxpayers money for his and his pal’s expenses is obviously fine. Still, I suppose it is hard for Fox to have double standards when it he doesn’t have any singular ones in the first place.

Priti Patel, the sort of woman who if she met the Wizard of Oz would demand his heart. Not to replace her hard boiled rock of an emotionless organ but just so she could watch him die before she punched a munchkin for sport. She asked why we couldn’t use possible food and supply shortages to Ireland as a way to blackmail them into saving us from a no deal. Yes, because nothing builds comradery like picking old wounds with a machete. I reckon we’re about a week away from her heading to the Green Isle on a week off and trying to eat all the potatoes herself until something changes.

And Esther ‘I’m only in it to collect souls’ McVey said she’d run for Conservative Minister if she was asked, you know in the same way she’d only enter your house and suck your blood dry if you invited her in.

On the other team Labour leader and anthropomorphized jumble sale Jeremy Corbyn wrote a long opinion piece for The Guardian on what Labour wants from Brexit which seems to mostly be being in the single market while not being in the single market. Great and that should work brilliantly on account of, you know, that being one of things the EU said you definitely cannot do time and time again over the last two years. Its becoming increasingly hard to pretend Labour have some secret big plan that involves them flip flopping all over the place like a drunk salmon, when it seems much more likely that their main strategy is to just keep returning to and licking the poo, and every time hoping really hard that it’s now become ice cream.

The TV debate between May and Corbyn was cancelled after neither could reach an agreement with how it could be done. IS THERE NOTHING THAT THEY DO THAT ISN’T A METAPHOR FOR BREXIT? Corbyn didn’t like the BBC format and lets face it there’s every chance their version of balance included two people endlessly firing the same not possible solutions at each other….oh wait. Oh. May didn’t like the ITV format which involved, you know, her being asked questions. So instead channel 4 showed The Real Brexit Debate which involved people who always say the same things saying the same things for everyone’s lack of enjoyment. But hey, I guess it is the season for repeats.

Conservative MP and giant baby Will Quince resigned from the cabinet in protest against May’s deal on Saturday. I don’t even know what his problem with it was, I really don’t care. But I do care that a Conservative MP is called Will Quince, because that’s up there with the most Conservative names a Conservative MP could have. Who’s next to go? Ceclia Caviar? Freddy Twelvehouses? Hugo Richfriends? Emily Inheritance? Malcom Paedophile?

And as if by that point all the odds weren’t stacked up against arch odd May and her plan, the EU court then ruled that the UK can cancel Brexit without the EU 27’s permission, I say that’s bloody typical eh? Bloomin’ EU letting the UK have sovereignty over its article 50 triggering. Well we’ll bloody show them and not use it! Ha! Who’s the idiots now? Oh. Oh dear. The government in all their wisdom have said the court’s ruling is irrelevant as we are leaving the EU anyway, and that they didn’t want to go to your party in the first place because they’re having their own one with a cup they’ve drawn a face on, some old crisps and water that someone blew bubbles into with a straw.

So that’s contempt of parliament, stupid comments, backing out of a debate she wanted, Will Quince and an article 50 revocation ruling. And so here we are with May deferring a vote on her deal, a deal that she said was the best deal negotiable with the EU but is now going to go back to discuss other options which doesn’t really make sense. If that’s the best deal, what are the other options? A deal that’s pretty much the same but also everyone will get stung in the eyes by a bee every Wednesday? No deal at all but also to visit Europe everyone will have to just swim the channel and France are allowed to throw old baguettes at us as we get near? Who actually knows. May asked the house if they actually want to deliver Brexit which was a stupid question as it got answered with a resounding ‘No’ like you would if a supply teacher asked you class if they’d all like to skip PE and eat pins all afternoon. Judging by May’s government I’m not sure they could adequately deliver hate mail without it arriving several years after the intended victim had already died. She then did her usual lecturing on how a people’s vote would not be democratic despite her government being done for contempt. That’s like Gary Barlow education people in the benefits of tax or Ed Sheeran going round judging people’s onstage dress sense. Or musical ability. Or personality.

The DUP and Tory Brexiteers say they won’t back May’s deal if it still has a backstop, the EU have said they refuse to renegotiate a new deal, Labour and the Lib Dems are discussing a no confidence vote in the government and there’s no new date for the vote though the last day it can be is on March 28^th the day before we leave because nothing focuses the mind like last minute prep. Overall it seems like this year’s festive season will only really involve one massive turkey on the table and an entire country that’s stuffed.

Oh and in other news, as if there’s any, is that ancient myth to scare children about what happens if they never brush their teeth Nigel Farage announced that he’s left UKIP because he does not recognize the party anymore, though that could be because everyone in it looks like they’re increasingly melting. I give it 5 minutes before he complains that he’s not left quickly enough and demands he returns in order to do it properly. After his departure Paul Nuttall also announced he was leaving which was a shock to everyone as we had completely forgotten he existed and just assumed he was some sort of collage made of spam and boiled eggs.

ADMIN

OMGWTFBBQ podchamps. How are you? I have to say, today’s podcast went through about 6 drafts until it became whatever this mess is you’re currently listening to. As if it isn’t enough for Theresa May to ruin her own plans, and the country’s but also this podcast’s too. THE WORST! SHE IS THE WORST! You might remember that last week I said this week’s show would be in two parts, one before the vote, one after, with likely no guest. Well, that was the plan and now no vote means only one very short part with so many news sprays happening throughout the day that this script become sodden with pissy changes and no, there is no guest. Add to that my weekend which has been mostly looking after a baby with a fever which is all levels of awful. My daughter was all the temperatures and spent day and night wailing in discomfort while refusing to take Nurofen or Calpol leaving me and my wife in delirious tiredness to consider necking a bottle each to get through it. I wish adult Nurofen tasted like oranges. Then at least with a hangover it’d just taste like a mixer for whatever booze aftertaste you still have in your mouth. Oh and I discovered that the face recognition on my phone still unlocks for me when I’m wearing a Santa hat and beard, which is really worrying because now I’m super paranoid I’ll be mugged by a Mall Santa. What are they called in the UK? Shopping Santa? Twats in red? Creepy Blokes? No idea.

So quick mini admin with a shout out to Lawrence and John for joining the Patreon page at patreon.com/parpolbro and I actually put something I hope you’ll enjoy up there last week though I will probably release an edited version for all you subscribers anyway. But if you’d like to join please do though probably best to wait to see if the pound recovers at all otherwise sponsoring me even a dollar could lose you your house or something and while I think this podcast is definitely worth a house, you’ll probably need yours for when the Purge kicks in after Brexit. So maybe just buy me a ko-fi at ko-fi.com/parpolbro and I’m considering making that page able to take monthly donations too if that’s more your thing. Can just giving me money be a thing? What’s a sexual preference where you get no actual pleasure and I just get a coffee? Coffee cupping? Coffee sports? Oh god those are probably things aren’t they? A special thanks this week to to a listener who I will keep anonymous but who is helping me with a legal copyright issue on the basis that by doing so, that’s their Patreon payment. So you know I’m open to that too. If you have a particular skill set, like Liam Neesons, and don’t want to donate but do want to send me cakes, or teach me kung fu or have all my enemies assassinated, then I’m also hugely grateful. Though cakes are definitely best.

Thanks too to those of you who wrote bloody lovely reviews over the past week. One recent one in particular very much made my day though to be fair the rest of my day did mostly involve a baby being sick on me, so its not saying much, but I was really chuffed, thank you. If you too would like to review the show with stars or words or a series of emojis that I can decipher to read your opinions of what will happen next with Brexit. Any of those, please do so on your fave pod apps.

So this week’s show is pretty much what you’ve heard and one more little bit because I’m exhausted and no one knows what’s going on. Essentially what you’ve tuned into is the audio book of one man’s breakdown, with occasional jokes. Normal service will probably not resume next week because we are living in the darkest timeline. But hey, at least there’s a bit of this:

HEADLINES

Now a cynical person might assume that with things as they are, an unexpected deportation from the UK to a Commonwealth country could almost be seen as an extreme attempt at aid. The Windrush scandal however and the government’s deportation of many British citizens was just part of their purposefully planned hostile environment policy, a policy that again, does now seem really pointless when the only way it could seem a more hostile place was if May insisted Foreign Secretary and elastic spanner Jeremy Hunt

now admitted there are 49 people who were wrongly deported to Nigeria and Ghana between March and September 2017 who they haven’t bothered to get in touch with, or as they put it, there was no specific attempt to contact them. You know, so there’s every chance they gave them a call by accident. That happens right? You’re at work, you lean on your phone, it calls a British citizen in Nigeria that you kicked out of the country because you lost their paper work? A National Audit Office report said the Home Office had a distinct lack of curiosity about finding out who had been affected. Curiosity? That’s not a British value. Imagine if Brits tried to find out about things? What would happen to our parliamentary democracy then? Sensible decisions? Elected officials that aren’t just arseholes with enough money? Weird. There are detention and deportation files of 160,000 Commonwealth nationals that need to be reviewed but the Home Office said its too much work to do. Typical lazy Brits. What they want to do is hire some workers from abroad to actually give a shit about it.

Health Secretary Matt Hancock, a man who always looks like he’s about to tell you a really boring story about the day he wore odd socks, he has been accused of breaking Ministerial Code in what I like to call ‘an everyday occurrence in today’s political climate’. This accusation says Hancock has endorsed a private healthcare company after he appeared in the London Evening Standard’s Future London Health Supplement which probably just featured 3 pages of people coughing and someone fainting on the tube in the summer. This Supplement was backed by private firm Babylon, so called because it’s ethos is from 6^th century BC which stands for before care. In his interview Hancock mainly wangs on about Babylon’s GP at Hand app because he just loves his apps does Matt, bloody loves them. Apps for all his things like having a GP at Hand or stealing everyone’s information at a Conservative conference. Bloody loves ‘em. This app charges patients £9.99 a month to get fast tracked treatment and its listed as an app on the Health Secretary’s ministerial phone. The ministerial code says MPs should not normally accept invitations to act as patrons to, or in support of organizations dependent in whole or in part of government funding. Shadow Health Minister and Sean Bean stunt double Justin Madders said that by promoting pay for access health funds it goes directly against the objectives and principles of the NHS which is free at the point of use and open to all. Hancock has promoted the app in the Telegraph too, given talks at their head offices and their CEO is among 10 tech executives who met Matt Hancock within days of getting his fancy new posish. Obviously, the Department of health have said this isn’t the case and its just part of Matt loving his apps and promoting loads of technologies that can help patients outcome. Oh I see, that’s what Hancock meant when he was campaigning for people to get proactive about their health and lose pounds.

BREXIT FALLOUT

HA! I HAVE NO IDEA! THERE’S EVERY CHANCE ANYTHING I SAY NOW WILL BE IRRELEVANT BY TOMORROW. MAYBE JUST ADOPT THE BRACE POSITION AND HOPE FOR THE BEST. AT LEAST IF WE ALL EAT ENOUGH OVER CHRISTMAS WE MIGHT SURVIVE THROUGH A MONTH OF NO DEAL ON FAT SUPPLIES ALONE. MAYBE GO TO LOCAL SOCIAL OCCASIONS TO SUSS OUT WHICH OF YOUR NEIGHBOURS WILL BE BEST TO EAT. WHY NOT TRY LEARNING HOW TO MAKE A FIRE USING A CAR THAT’S BEEN ABANDONED IN KENT? OR FORAGING FOR INSULIN? AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAH

END

And that’s it for this week’s Partly Political Broadcast podcast. Yes, it was a brief one and yes there was no guest and yes I blame Theresa May for that and, well, most things. There’s no chocolate in our flat. That’s likely her fault. My socks have a hole in, definitely her fault. I had to park around the corner from where I live. She really has to go. It should be a normalish episode next week and then a little break over Christmas unless the government has a big break. But thank you for choosing this show for your newsings and amusings and please do review the show on your favourite pod apps, especially you Matt Hancock, and donate to the patreon, though I mean, yeah maybe wait a few days, or the ko-fi and please just do tell others that if they’d like to hear a podcast that includes lots of bad edits where the host had to cut out him openly weeping as yet another terrible government decision has ruined 5 minutes of decent material, then they should tune in.

Thank you lots to Acast for checking this show into its pod room 29, to my brother The Last Skeptik for all the noises that aren’t the ones I make, and to Kat Day for typing up the linear liner notes even though this week, she’s got an easy job.

This will be back next week when it’s likely the government will have just petered out like an 80’s power ballad, getting smaller and quieter every day until we realise there’s no one there anymore, it’s just that someone left a light on in the kitchen. Then the building folds in and collapses, only for a small worm to appear from the rubble with a crown on and lead our country into a more sensible future.

BYEEEEEEEEEEEE

This week’s show was brought to you by Prime Minister Cheddar. It’s the best cheddar available but it still tastes mostly like dog sick. Our tasters get booked in to make sure it tastes great and then cancelled last minute out of fear that they won’t, so hey, why bother! Prime Minister Cheddar, rich but with no discernable character and far too crumbly for its own good.

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