Episode 126 – Stop! Stop! It’s Already Dead – May’s Deal, NHS 10 Year Plan, Grace Petrie

Released on Tuesday, January 15th, 2019.

Episode 126 – Stop! Stop! It’s Already Dead – May’s Deal, NHS 10 Year Plan, Grace Petrie

Episode 126 – The podcast returns! And on the day of the vote on May’s deal, which means, stop what you’re doing and listen to this show before it becomes completely topically irrelevant in about, I reckon, 19 hours after it’s released. GO TEAM GO! This episode has a look at what may happen next, the NHS 10 year plan and Tiernan (@tiernandouieb) has a chat with brilliant political folk singer Grace Petrie (@gracepetrie).

Grace’s music can be found at https://gracepetrie.bandcamp.com/

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Music by The Last Skeptik (@thelastskeptik) – https://www.thelastskeptik.com/ – Subscribe to his podcast Thanks For Trying here.

THIS EPISODE IS TAGGED WITH: • NHS, NHS 10 Year Plan, No Deal, parpolbro, Partly Political Broadcast, Patreon, podcast, political, politics, Sajid Javid, satire, Theresa May, Tiernan Douieb

Transcript

Ep126

WARNING: The topical content on this week’s podcast will self-destruct in approximately 19 hours after release, though probably still not as quickly as the government will.

Hello and welcome to the Partly Political Broadcast, the podcast that looks at politics and laughs because frankly, otherwise it’ll cry. I’m Tiernan Douieb and this week as Prime Minister and only person to try cryogenics while still alive Theresa May says that voting down her deal would cause paralysis in Parliament, I bet that if that happened, the government would still stay it was found fit for work.

Yes, New Year, same old shit. As Parliament embarks on a week where everything could change by the time you’ve heard this podcast, the past month of British Politics has been less of a run up to leap into action, but more a Bird Box challenge game of kabaddi. The vote on May’s deal happens in just hours of this show being released and it currently looks like her deal will be rejected by a majority of a 228 votes, which would be a record for largest parliamentary defeat, something no doubt that May, as she clings onto power in September like a demented barnacle stuck to a plug socket, will tell the Conservative Conference means she excels at defeats and how actually is the smallest defeat in the last 5 minutes which makes her amazing, whereas the last Labour government didn’t get anything on a scratch card that Alistair Darling did in 2009.

According to the government such a defeat is not in the interests of the public because it’ll either lead to a no deal which is now no longer better than a bad deal, a realization that can only be put down to either changing fashion trends in 2019, because apparently this year its not a great look to be wearing rags woven only from sodden British hay leftover from our masses of slaughtered livestock. Or maybe like Lady Gaga only just removing her collaboration with R Kelly from sale, they’re pretending they’ve only just seen the internet for the first time ever. So, either it’ll lead to a no deal, or a no Brexit, again highlighting that without her option which gives no one what they want at all, voting against May’s deal will at least give one of the options people seem to be keen on. This is still the worst negotiating tactic of all time. None of you want this, but if you vote against it, some of you will get what you actually want. It’s like a parent offering their kids, come with me to the shops, or you can play with your friends, or torture the neighbour’s cat. Yes one of those options is pointlessly destructive but at least it’s more fun than being dragged round IKEA for two hours while your mum spends hours looking at furniture but only buys tealights.

A no deal scenario though, which according to disgraced MP Liam the disgrace Fox, is survivable, putting it in the same ball park as having a stroke, now looks less likely thanks to parliament defeating the government in two motions during the debate on May’s Deal. The first was Cooper’s Amendment, as proposed by Labour MP and Mad Comics icon Yvette Cooper, which means that parliament would have to vote first, or article 50 would have to extended before the government could change tax laws to help implement a no deal. So if we crash out, then it’s unlikely your earnings will go towards a ferry company hired to cope with the channel overload, despite having absolutely no ferries available. Though to be fair while giving £14m to Seabourne Freight for contingency plans might seem crazy when you realise they’ve never run a single service, research shows the ports in Kent aren’t ready for extra ferries, so why not fix that by not sending them any? The Department of Transport also trialed a traffic jam which was definitely not an innovative one, in Kent at Marston Airport, to see how it would handle post Brexit customs delays. 150 lorries and HGV’s were invited and only 89 showed up, which makes me, a Type 1 diabetic, feel really reassured about the UK having the right amount of stockpiled insulin. Using 89 large vehicles to simulate what may end up being tens of thousands of vehicles in an event that doesn’t need to happen, is as helpful as prepping for a disease outbreak by having a lemsip.

Of course, this was all the concoction, or rather undrinkable piss cocktail of rejected butler for the Munsters and transport secretary Chris Grayling, a man who spent most of the Christmas period insisting that the best way to stop drones grounding flights was just to keep airport runways closed. Brilliant. If he was in the film A Quiet Place, I’m pretty sure he’d try to survive by not breathing incase the aliens hear it. Grayling is backing May’s Deal, and he warned that by blocking Brexit from happening, it could cause a far-right surge, you know, like the one that’s already happened. There’s no better way to stop things from happening than by you know, doing all the things that aide them happening. Anyway, I’m sure in Grayling’s case he is just constantly terrified that if there was some sort of French style revolution, he’d be immediately tied to train tracks and then left there for years as nothing hits him due to all the bus replacement services caused by his shitty department.

The second motion that the government lost on last week was the Grieve amendment, which yes sounds like it’s just about the period of mourning we’re all going through for the death of reasonable political debate. But no, it was Conservative MP and bird turned human through a curse Dominic Grieve’s amendment that gives the government only 3 days to come up with a plan B if May’s Deal fails. Previously they’d had 21 days and even then that would mainly involve a spokesperson popping by to tell MPs ‘er, we’ve chosen the font to write plan B in’ before running away again. Speaker and Wind In The Willows star John Bercow allowed a vote on the amendment even though only ministers should be allowed to amend the motion because blah blah parliamentary stuff, but Bercow selected it for a vote anyway and the government lost and now they have 3 days to come up with an alternative to a crap inadequate plan that took them 2 years to get to. Then if that happens, which is probably will, the government has said debate on a plan B would only be 90 minutes long, signaling that whatever they come up with will have less depth than a children’s film. If Plan B fails, I think it goes to a quickfire round, where each side has a minute to shout as many alternative plans as possible, followed by a sudden death round where a final plan has to be submitted using just 12 words. Despite Bercow’s allowing of the vote basically being in the cause of taking back control for those elected to represent the people, Brexiteers seem livid and are blaming him for staging a coup against Brexit. Brexit is the Monkey’s Paw of campaigns. I feel like the £350m for the NHS that was promised may somehow appear as promised, despite evidence to the contrary, but only because it’ll be the pitiful insurance money gained after the hospitals burn down in a freak accident.

Labour leader and what if Bluto was really ill Jeremy Corbyn has called for an election again if May’s deal gets voted down, in order to break the deadlock. Except he says his party are still pushing for Brexit just one that has lots of things the EU says it can’t have. So, to break the deadlock of a government who don’t know what to do about Brexit, you’d offer people a chance to vote for another government that don’t know what to do about Brexit? Maybe Jezza has just gone for the idea that a change of scenery will do everyone a world of good? It’s the political equivalent of sticking leftovers from lunch into a sandwich and saying you’ve made something new for dinner.

Meanwhile Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Muppet or a man Abe told May on a visit to the UK that the global wish is that the UK avoids a no deal scenario, and that the whole world is watching. Yes, we are Earth’s reality TV show that viewers are only tuning into for schadenfreude. Only one contestant will leave, but everyone, see this merry novelty dance they’ll do to determine just how they’ll depart!

Questions of the safety of MPs have arisen as a group of men in hi vis vests shouted ‘Nazi’ at MP and head of the neighbourhood watch Anna Soubry when she was interviewed on the news. Thing is, judging by the online profiles of those involved, there’s every chance they meant Nazi as a compliment.

In a speech today in Stoke in a China factory, which is the worst place for bull, May’s last ditch attempt to get MPs onside had her saying that blocking her deal will do catastrophic damage to the public’s faith in democracy. Yeah that’ll persuade ‘em! I mean, how much you can ruin something that’s already dead? She may as well warn that voting down her deal will really hurt this decomposed roadkill. Voting against my deal could cause foundation issues in the Lighthouse of Alexandria. Anyway, in proof that it worked, hours after that speech Conservative Whip Gareth ‘At least I’m not the other Johnson’ Johnson resigned his cabinet position saying that he couldn’t, in all conscience, support the government’s position. So that’s probably invalid then, on account of no actual proof he has a conscience to begin with. As I write this, the vote on May’s deal is tomorrow, if the vote doesn’t go her way then she’ll be in Brussels on Wednesday where they’ll tell her yet again that the deal will not be renegotiated but May will still try like a dog that keeps eating its own shit in the hope that it’s become ice cream. Then next Monday, Plan B, so called because you barely see any evidence of it anymore and trying to go looking for it may get the government stung. May asked Parliament ‘when the history books are written, people will be asking, did we let the British people down?’ Doubt it but that’s only because they’ll be too busy asking ‘what is a book? Why is all the paper on fire? Can I take my gas mask off yet? Will you share that water or will I have to fight for it? And ‘Why did all the rich people go to Mars?’

In other news, because there has been some squeezed in around the shouting, self-indulgent, mindless rant of Brexit, Home Secretary and Megamind but without the mind bit Sajid Javid cut short his family holiday on an African safari because he had to race home to chase the Conservative leadership instead. Javid declared a major migration incident because six men were found on a beach near Dover in December, though if they’d just said they were trying to set up a ferry company, he’d probably have given them £14m instead. The Home Secretary was heavily criticized after he suggested that the UK should deter asylum seekers to get refuge here, though it is possible he was just describing Brexit.

The government unveiled their NHS 10 year plan, which they say involves giving world class care for patients in England, though they don’t say which parts of the world, so there’s every chance you’ll have a US style bill after treatment or like Sierra Leone there’ll only be 22 doctors per 1 million people.

Across the pond the US government is still in shutdown after President and collapsed soufflé Donald Trump blames the Democrats for not getting to work on building a wall on the Mexican border, claiming that criticisms that a wall is a medieval form of protection are stupid on account of wheels also being around in medieval times and people still needing wheels now. Yes, that really was his defence. Now there’s a dozen and one jokes about how they should replace the wheels on Trump’s presidential motorcade with some wooden cart ones, but I think a better plan would be to show him Game of Thrones and see how long it is before he tries to persuade congress to build a dragon instead.

And lastly a drama about the Leave campaign called Brexit the Uncivil War aired on Channel 4, causing immediate issues as it promised to have cartoon otter Benedict Cumberbatch in it, and then actually did. If it wanted to be realistic it’d have had a last minute stand in wearing a paper mask of Pope Benedict, and the whole show would only have lasted 5 minutes as they’d just have expected it to write itself. Still, I got bored 15 minutes in so I guess in that respect it was spot on. And singer Kate ‘ooh its windy outside’ Bush has insisted that she isn’t a Tory despite everyone saying she was. Yeah yeah, then how come Kate you hang around with someone called Heathcliffe? Hmmmm?

ADMIN

Happy oh no wait we’re 15 days in now right, so hey, newish year everyone! Welcome back to the Partly Political Broadcast and let me tell you I have been so excited about kick starting this podcast again for 2019 so I can tell you and make gags about all the stuff that’s happened in order to make absolutely no progress about anything, before it all becomes irrelevant within hours. Good times everyone! Good times! Yes, it was possibly an error releasing this on the very day of the vote on May’s Deal where everything or nothing could change, but there was a lot to catch up on and if nothing else, this week’s interview should stand the increasingly hard test of time. It is one of the hardest tests that isn’t it? I mean, no one gets a great mark unless they’re immortal and then they ultimately lose by having to deal with other people’s bullshit forever which is, let’s face it, too long. Anyway, I hope you can enjoy this show for what it is and why not listen to it while watching the Commons on Tuesday night and as the decision unfolds you can imagine each and every part of this show fade away to dust in terms of topical relevance like Thanos has got all involved.

Anyway, how are you? How’s your year going? Mine has largely involved attempted Veganuary and succeeding it at by eating the unhealthiest food possible. Still those cows will thank me as I die of oat cream filled arteries. Thanks tons for coming back to the show, or if you’re a newbie who joined the subscription ranks over Christmas cos damn you know how to treat yourself, then welcome to you all. I hope you all enjoyed the bonus content over the Christmas time. Who knows how this year will go but I have a feeling this will continue being an hour long show for a while and still not catch up on everything. I will try to churn out a few extra bits when I can and like this week may demand, when necessary. Thanks to to those of you who donated to the ko-fi account over Christmas, it’s much appreciated. I’ve now changed the ko-fi.com/parpolbro so you can do a recurring payment on there if you would like to regularly buy me a coffee and I’ll be adding the same far too rare extras there that I do to the Patreon site too, which I know less of you fancy joining due to the whole dollars thingy. Well the ko-fi is in pounds so hopefully that makes things easier and the patreon is still there on patreon.com/parpolbro incase you want to gamble on which will be more expensive after several more months of Brexit vs US government shutdown. Oh the funs of collapsing economies eh? Thanks too to the lovely reviews that some of you gave the show over the holidays including several on a podcast site I didn’t even know existed till recently PodParadise or something, which sounds like a place that podcasts go to die, but hey, I’m that shallow I’d be happy for this show to be there. If you would like to leave this show a nice review with a big fat five stars, or a new 2019 slimline 5 stars if that’s what you want. Wait hang on, is a slimline five stars just a 2.5 stars? I have no idea what happens when numbers go on diets. Unless that’s how they become a sexy little number? Very confusing. Anyway please just review the show if you can.

Small bit of admin this week, or admini if you like. I made a joke on the mini Christmas top up episode about jazz musician Gilad Atzmon and anti-Semitism accusations against him, because you know, its always such a great subject for comedy. Anyway, one of you lot called Pete very kindly wrote in and said that Gilad is Jewish himself, and critical of Isreal and pro-Palestine but not anti-Semitic and that some of his writing is interesting even if, as Pete pointed out, he didn’t agree with it all. Anyway, some of you may agree, some of you may disagree, what I’m mainly mentioning it for is that I ashamedly didn’t remotely research or look it up as it was a rushed mini episode and I mainly thought there was a gag in the idea of bigoted jazz. So very sorry to all of you as I do try to counter act incorrect news by actually researching stuff but it is just little old me that does all this and sometimes I forget so please do, like Pete, call me out on it and I’ll be more than happy to correct when I can. Hopefully no more of that in future! Though it does once again hammer home that you probably shouldn’t use this show as your only news source even if mean descriptions of politicians is what the news is absolutely missing.

On this week’s show baring in mind anything Brexit related may go out the window, there is a fun interview. WHAT? Yes I know but I thought it’d be nice to kick off the year with some positivity, so I interviewed excellent political folk singer and pal of mine, the wonderful Grace Petrie. Then around that I ruin all the positivity with some possibilities of what may happen over the next weeks and months with Brexit or you know may totally not happen but either way you’ll never get that time back. HAPPY NEW YEAR! But before that, here is a very, very brief bit of this:

HEADLINES

The government unveiled their new 10 year plan for the NHS stating that it could save 500,000 lives. Could is the scary word in that sentence, plus they never mention if 500,000 is extra to the lives already saved or you know, just the cut off point before they let the 500,001st patient die to save money. Seriously though, the plan gives extra funding that will come from thin air or something, to GPs, mental health and community care and focuses a lot on prevention which the government really aren’t known for, and early detection, yeah again I mean really this shit writes itself. But there’s a lot of good in there on first glance, looking at more cancer screenings and digitization of services to name but two. But it doesn’t address the lack of money in social care which inadvertently puts greater strain on the NHS, the mental health policies are largely ones that were put into law over 6 years ago and are only just now being looked at, and records show that when a lot of money is thrown at say, digitization developments in the NHS, without lengthy trial and carefully planned roll out, it can really cock up. Last time it was tried £12bn was wasted and then it was all called off in 2011. To be fair, that was when Huckleberry Hound stunt double Andrew Lansley was in charge and I wouldn’t be surprised if he got confused by a calculator. More than any of this, understaffing means a lot of the policies will be hard to implement with one in 11 NHS posts unfilled, because you can’t cut waiting times when there’s less staff to see patients. And when the money for this plan is supposedly going to at least partly come from a Brexit dividend that many economists say doesn’t actually exist, how will this 10 year plan actually work? If the next week’s Brexit plans don’t kick it into the ground anyway by reducing even more staff and turning NHS pharmacies into one witch doctor with a ton of sage and some healing hands. But that’s the bonus of a 10-year plan right? In ten years, it’s very likely no one who announced it will be around or accountable for it, or using it instead preferring their private health care schemes. But I guess that’s real reason why they say its focused on patients.

Work and pensions secretary and woman who definitely spends her weekends hunting foxes with her bare hands Amber Rudd announced a raft of changes to Universal Credit because why kill off a monster of a policy when you can put lipstick on it and hope no one notices it now looks like a monster on a night out. The big change is that Rudd has delayed the roll out of the new benefits system to 3 million claimants, instead just asking MPs to vote on a trial for 10,000 people as it’s much easier to ignore that many if you completely ruin their lives. Rudd says she wants UC to work for every claimant before its expanded, and she has announced two major changes to the policy. First is that payments will now go to the main carer in a household, which is sort of what charities such as Refuge and Women’s Aid have been campaigning for as often the Universal Credit single payment per family can penalize women, who are denied access to their benefits by abusive partners. By giving to the main carer, that means its more likely to go to the women in the family. However its still a single payment so may not work for all cases. The other major change is the partial scrapping of the two child limit for payments but it is only partial and anyone that has had more than two children after April 2017 is still affected. Considering that at some point that will apply to everyone with kids, its really not that much of a breakthrough. It’s like giving free pensions to everyone who turned 100 in July, 2001 and pretending you’ve saved the elderly.

As these not very good reforms were announced, at the same time four working single mums won a high court challenge against the DWP, that their method of calculating the claimants universal credit payments was unlawful and left them struggling financially. Single mothers are one of the largest groups affected by the benefit cap, so the high court win was a big indictment of the system. The DWP has said it will carefully consider the court’s judgement. Considering Rudd’s record I’ve got a horrible feeling nothing will change and she’ll just tell everyone she was unaware of any issues.

INTERVIEW WITH GRACE

You’d be forgiven for thinking that music nowadays, sung by them kids with their bleeping blooping noises and loud twanging machines, isn’t all that political. Compared to back in the day when you know, Bob Dylan sang ‘waaar waaar waaar’ and highlighted the issues surrounding er, whirring machines, or Rage Against the Machine railed against, er, printers always jamming, or Billie Holiday sang ‘Strange Fruit’ about, er. tomatoes, it’s hard today to find overtly political songers complaining about the state of things in a melodic manner. It would be great to think that Ed Sheeran’s Dive was about the pound after the Brexit referendum or that Ariana Grande’s Thank U Next was about the DWP’s treatment of people with disabilities but it’s highly unlikely. Is it too hard to write music about today’s politics without it being just screamcore metal? Or is it that artists in the twennie teens ae more entwined in breakups than Brexit. Or is it just that you’re listening in the wrong places? Like, have you tried, the world of folk music? As it says in its name, its the music of the people, and while you might fear that that means every track is about Boaty McBoatface, actually, it means that political musicians in 2019 do indeed exist. For example this week’s guest is a brilliant, passionate, prolific and extremely talented sort of folk musician – you’ll see what I mean by that in the interview – by the name of Grace Petrie.

If you don’t know Grace, then firstly sort that out asap, and secondly, she has been writing and playing protest songs since 2010 that somehow manage to be warm, funny, emotive and at the same time resonating and topical. You can probably tell, I’m a fan. And I have been ever since I was lucky enough to meet and work with Grace a few years ago as, as well as the folk music scene, she regularly appears on comedy shows alongside Josie Long and Robin Ince to name but a few. I’ve had the pleasure of watching her make an audience laugh, then cry and then sing along in united defiance with her rousing choruses. I’ve been meaning to get Grace on this podcast for a while and then, luckily, in the last week before Christmas we were on two different bills together, and so I thought it’d be a nice start to this podcast in 2019 if I interviewed her before one of them, to ask her how she does what she does and all about the difficulties of being a political musician in such an unstable era. Here is Grace:

SMALL CLIP OF BLACK TIE

INTERVIEW WITH GRACE PART 1

And we’ll be back with Grace in a minute but first…

BREXIT FALLOUT

There is no point to this bit really is there? It looks like May’s deal will be voted down but no one can actually predict anything anymore as it’s hard to guess the odds when it’s the odds that are in charge. But I thought it may be useful to just have a rundown of how this could go either way. Or knowing current politics, somehow it goes both ways and confuses everyone. Personally I’m hoping it gets voted against at 52 to 48% and then we can all enjoy May respect the will of the Parliamentary representatives of the people and have a brief laugh before we realise we have no clue of what comes next. I should also say, and oh god let me get a little retch out of the way at the thought of saying this, urgh, urgh, yeah ok that’s better, no wait, urgh, ok, May’s deal for a deal that is somehow trying to combine the wants and needs of Brexiteers and Remainers, isn’t that bad. Sure it’s nothing anyone wants but you know, in the way you can’t please everyone, especially if you’ve never tried before and when you smile it looks like you’re in pain. But unless we go into a terrifying no deal scenario or Brexit is avoided completely, it’s unlikely anyone, including Labour, would get any sort of better inbetweeny deal because of how the EU works in it’s very law based rather than case by case based way. But hey, who knows. It could just be that they’re all still so angry that they had to deal with misery flavoured candyfloss David Davis for so many months, followed by skin patty Dominic Raab and then Stephen Barclay a man so dull everything he says becomes immediately forgettable within seconds of saying it and of course May who’s presence in a room is less warm than the Mothman, that maybe they’d just be so overjoyed to see any other face that they’d slam through a ton of cherry picking. But somehow I doubt it. Corbyn’s want for a deal is still for a customs union with the EU, and access to the single market but no freedom of movement but maybe some. Essentially not far off a Norway deal but that would really upset leavers and would still need work on the Northern Ireland issue and oh god can I just bang my head on a desk for 5 minutes because I genuinely think that’d be more enjoyable.

So, if May’s Deal gets rejected then she’ll be in Brussels to try and get further concessions from the EU which they’ve said they won’t give, but that is possibly in the hope that her deal might get through, so they could change their minds if it doesn’t or you know, not. Who the fuck knows. Then by Monday she’s got to have a plan b which according to questions asked to other Conservative ministers over the past week will likely contain these exclusive details:

Shouting ‘look over there’ then running in the opposite direction
Closing their eyes, putting fingers in their ears and singing ‘lalalala’ till it stops
Blaming the EU
A military coup
Being so shit at handling no deal that they managed to screw that up and end up with some deal by total fluke
Being so shit at handling a no deal that the UN have to stage an intervention

So it’ll probably be one of those. But Parliament will get a say, and now thanks to Cooper’s amendment a No Deal option may be avoided. But if it isn’t, tons of No Deal planning will kick off like loads of emergency laws being rushed through parliament, lots of civil servants leaving their departments to work on No Deal and I dunno, Chris Grayling being thrown into the sea so he can’t ruin things. It’s also likely a whole ton of cabinet ministers will quit because David Cameron was such an inspiration to them. Business Secretary Greg Clark and Work and Pensions Secretary Amber Rudd have said they will definitely go which means May will either have to draft in hardcore Brexiteers to her cabinet which feels fair because it’s what they want but also based on the ones we’ve seen like Liam Fox or Davis, will mean everything goes wrong because they haven’t remotely thought about it and they’ll just sort of assume the cleaner will deal with it if they leave it in a pile over the weekend. MPs could also try to avoid a No Deal by putting forward their own Plan B ideas, though now May has said there’ll only be a 90 minute session for debate they’ll have to find catchy ones with one-word titles just to get it heard like a terrible episode of the Apprentice aka any episode of the Apprentice. Hey my plan is called Utopia! Mine’s called Dynamic Temptation! Mine’s called Great Plan! Oh Liam, please leave.

Corbyn will likely call a vote of no confidence in the government which he’s promised he’ll do soon, like the world’s most boring teaser trailer. If that’s backed by enough MPs then that’ll causes a 14 day countdown where everyone scrabbles to get a Commons majority. But the DUP won’t back it unless May’s deal passes, and Corbyn says he won’t push for one unless it fails. And if no one party or group of parties gets a commons majority then a snap general election is triggered, so called because everything is breaking, which would take place at the earliest on March 7^th leaving just 22 days before we leave the EU for whoever is elected to have to sort it all out, unless Article 50 is extended which May said she won’t do. Yes, I’m also amazed Dr Seuss hasn’t made this into a book yet but perhaps the characters and story are too ridiculous and don’t rhyme enough for him.

There’s also still support for a second referendum but probably not enough support to get it passed unless the Labour front bench back it and Corbyn has said he’s left that option on the table, but I imagine his table is full of a lot of crap including cut outs from newspapers and freshly dug up carrots so chances are he won’t notice it for several years. Or May could just insist everyone votes on her deal again and then again until it passes or we stay forever in a weird Brexit limbo where nothing really happens. God, imagine that eh? Just fucking imagine. Or May could resign and cause a Conservative leadership race but let’s face it, the only real way to remove May from Number 10 involves some sort of very strong descaler or knocking down the building and putting it somewhere else while she clings onto a sink for her life. I’ve never seen anyone more stubborn at staying where they are since The Exorcist.

Or, or, or, or, MPs could turn out to have been telling fibs all along and everyone votes for her deal which let’s face it, wouldn’t be that surprising considering most seem to flip flop opinions like they’re thought pancakes. If that happens, then everything plods along according to May’s plan, the UK leaves on March 29^th with a transition period till end of December 2021 and somehow inbetween all that the government, or whoever’s left in it so probably just May and a nodding dog toy, will have to sort out how the border in Northern Ireland will work, all of the post-Brexit relationships and trade deals with the EU and all non-EU countries and find something for Stephen Barclay to do once he’s run out of colouring books.

Or, I dunno, the sun could explode several thousand years earlier than predicted. By the time you’ve heard this the Sun could’ve exploded and as we all sit in burning gaseous flames in heat we’ve never felt before knowing that within a short time it will be dark and cold forever and all the while we’ll be thinking, we’ll at least we don’t have to deal with Brexit negotiations anymore. FINGERS CROSSED.

And now back to Grace…

INTERVIEW WITH GRACE PART 2

Thanks so much to Grace for letting me interview her before the Nine Lessons show we were both doing that night. You can find Grace’s tour dates and music and other bits and pieces on her website at gracepetrie.com, her Twitter @gracepetrie and buy her tracks at gracepetrie.bandcamp.com or on the music provider of your preference. And really do do that. Licensing laws and all that prevent me from putting more than a few seconds of her music on here, and rightly so, but I honestly couldn’t recommend it enough. Or of course, see her supporting Frank Turner over the next few months. There is a tiny bit of extra Grace interview that I’m going to add to the Patreon and Ko-Fi pages if you donate to the show, where I asked her about the financial implications of being a musician in today’s difficult climate. That’ll be up on those pages later in the week.

Thanks also to Kings Place in Kings Cross for finding us a quiet room to record in. It is an excellent venue with loads of brilliant shows, talks and of course the London podcast festival in September so do check them out at kingsplace.co.uk.

I’ve had some interesting guests approach me for interviews over the next few months which is great and I’ve got a few I’ve lined up too, but I still want to know who you’d like me to interview, within realistic possibility and what subjects to find interviewees for. You can let me know by dropping me a line @parpolbro on Twitter, the Partly Political Broadcast Facebook group, the contact page on PartlyPoliticalBroadcast.co.uk or email me at partlypoliticalbroadcast@gmail.com. Or take a hint from the government and just assume guests will appear of their own accord and then blame them as this podcast collapses, for getting on with their own lives rather than doing all they can to be rambled at by a bearded idiot. As always, it’s probably best to just email me.

END

And that’s all for this week’s Partly Political Broadcast podcast, the first one of 2019! Thank you for blindly stumbling into this new year with me and this show, all of us slowly moving forward trying to navigate around all the poo. Please spread the word about this show to friends, or perhaps even Romans or countrypeople though I do know Romans haven’t invented podcast yet so you may have to inscribe it for them which could be an effort. Please join the Patreon or ko-fi if you can, and I’ll be posting a tiny bit of bonus Grace Petrie to both of those later in the week. And if you can and haven’t aleady, review the show on your favourite podcast sites or sides of dirty vans, but do wash your hands afterwards because the plague.

Thanks to Acast for stockpiling this show amongst its other emergency ear food, to my brother The Last Skeptik for all the beeps and boops and to Kat Day for all her weekly linear liner note writings, which you can see and follow up on any bits you needed links for on this show, on the website at partlypoliticalbroadcast.co.uk.

This show will be back next week when Theresa May will announce that her plan B is to just pretend nothing outside the UK exists and tell all children that the sea is endless and you can’t cross the water or you’ll anger the gods. Sajid Javid gets upset at the lack of migrant crisis this causes so votes against it and the DUP try to vote against it but as they’re from Northern Ireland May doesn’t believe they’re real and ignores them.

BYEEEEEEEEEEE

This week’s show was sponsored by Hi-Whizz Vests, low quality urine coloured safety clothing for the populist who can’t get enough paypal donations to afford a proper one. Order now and within a few working days you too can pretend that you are angry about burning issues of inequality when actually you’re just a bit racist and desperate for cash and friends. For just £15.99 you too can run around parliament calling politicians fascists for respecting democracy while saying you identify with the French even though you don’t want anything to do with them, all the while being less likely to get hit by a car. Hi-Whizz Vests so everyone knows you’re a penis, even at nighttime.