Further Reading

What is an alternative backstop? Is it like a backstop but more lo-fi or written by an indie kid? Why is there still nothing happening? Does Chris Grayling really not know why everyone hates him? Where have all the buses gone? All these questions and more, sort of answered in this week’s show. Plus Tiernan (@tiernandouieb) interviews Nazek Ramadan and Nomi at Migrant Voice (@migrantvoiceuk) about the Home Office’s scamming of tens of thousands of international students.

Links and sources of info from Nazek’s interview:

• • Migrant Voice on Twitter – https://twitter.com/MigrantVoiceUK
• • Media Trust on Twitter – https://twitter.com/Media_Trust
• • Amnesty International UK on Twitter – https://twitter.com/AmnestyUK
• • Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants (JCWI) on Twitter – https://twitter.com/JCWI_UK
• • Migrants Rights Network on Twitter – https://twitter.com/JCWI_UK
• • The Refugee Council on Twitter – https://twitter.com/refugeecouncil
• • Refugee Action on Twitter – https://twitter.com/RefugeeAction
• • Migrants Organise on Twitter – https://twitter.com/migrantsorg
• • Find out who your Local MP is – https://www.mysociety.org/wehelpyou/who-is-your-mp/

All the usual ParPolBro stuff:

• • Twitter – twitter.com/ParPolBro and twitter.com/TiernanDouieb   
• • Facebook – www.facebook.com/groups/ParPolBro 
• • Website – www.tiernandouieb.co.uk/podcast
• • Donate to the Patreon – www.patreon.com/parpolbro
• • Buy me a coffee – ko-fi.com/parpolbro
• • Review the show on iTunes – itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/partly-political-broadcast/id1075342863?mt=2 
• • Review the show on Stitcher – www.stitcher.com/podcast/partly-political-broadcast
• • The Last Skeptik – www.thelastskeptik.com

Transcript

Ep129

Hello and welcome to the Partly Political Broadcast, the podcast that takes a sideways look at politics, but that’s mainly because politics appears to be lying down, waiting to die. This is episode 129, I’m Tiernan Douieb and this week as Schools Minister and rich man’s Russ Abbott Nick Gibb suggests schools should ban pupils from using mobile phones in lessons, I totally agree as how detrimental would it be to a child’s education if mid-lesson they googled the news and realized they don’t actually have to learn anything to become a politician.

Yeah, I started with a joke that wasn’t Brexit based I didn’t want to drive you away faster than a Nissan X-Trail. While the X-Trail sounds like some sort of walking tour of a porn studio, it’s actually Sunderland that is getting screwed as Nissan have decided they’ll be making their new hybrid car in Japan instead, what with Japan now signing the biggest global trade deal with the EU ever. It is nice to know that Brexit Britain has indeed opened up global trade routes, just between everyone else except the UK, allowing Europe to access the Far East a lot easier than the North East. Nissan have decided that the government’s top secret £60m deal they offered them wasn’t worth it, probably after seeing that the DUP got a lot more than that and they’ve probably tried to campaign against hybrids a few times, likely complaining that they aren’t natural in God’s eyes. I’m guessing one of the X-Trail’s new features was a SatNav that helps you swerve piles of pointless bullshit.

Unlike Nissan, Brexit itself is going nowhere fast. After last week’s Parliamentary Bonfire of the Sanities, where a Conservative/DUP majority voted against, well, everything, proving that a lot of elected wrongs makes a confused right wing. There’s so much to do that parliament has had its February recess cancelled, and so is its afternoon playtime and morning playtime is staying indoors and doing crafts or watching a public service video about the dangers of farm machinery. And there’s no milk because that’s the Conservatives fault. Prime Minister and face painted onto a cheese grater Theresa May, is returning to the EU to, as she says ‘Battle For Britain’. I mean, she’s heading in the wrong direction by going to Brussels. If she really wants to fight for her country she’ll spend 20 minutes punching herself in the face before challenging other Conservatives to see who wants to bring it, while wielding a shoe. May still wants a time limit on the Irish Backstop agreement, because you know, her government have been so good at delivering so many other policies on time and that’s a real re-assurance right? I mean of course they’ll have a solution to the Irish border issue before a deadline. Just look at their much more manageable promises to tackle air pollution which they missed all the targets on..oh, or hey, how about their really reasonable and perhaps far too small housebuilding targets which they also…missed. Oh. How about the sugar reduction target? No? Really? Oh well. Its teacher recruitment targets… Look all I’m saying is I’m sure that they’ll be fine to come up with a plan for a situation that’s so unfixable McGuyver would hand in his notice rather than deal with, by a specified time that they’ve agreed. Totes. If not a time limit, then an alternative to the backstop seems to be the other idiot option and May has assembled, the Alternative Arrangements Working Group, or appropriately AAWG, with Leave and Remain MPs meeting to explore ideas. Which means they’ll all have expensive cakes, say hmm a lot and then leave and make stuff up which they’ll tell the news and nothing will happen. Home Secretary and Uncle Fester tribute act Sajid Javid is already suggesting again that existing technology could be used at the Irish Border, which considering experts say no such suitable technology exists, I’m assuming they’ve drawn up plans for an Alexa to sit perched on the Lenamore Road, as truck drivers shout what’s in their trucks as they go past and it finds tunes. ‘Pigs’, ‘I’m sorry I’m having trouble understanding you. ‘Pigs’. ‘I’m sorry, please could you repeat that’. ‘Pigs’ ‘Here’s Sweet Relief by Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs’. It’ll be fine. Man who still thinks curtains are a great idea on your head Marcus Fysh, has insisted though that AAWG are discussing new proposels which aren’t based on new technology, so that means it’ll probably involve some sort of wall of Morris dancers while a town crier shouts ‘border’ at anyone driving past.

Chairman of the 1922 committee and teeth with a skin scarf Graham Brady was the MP who put forward the Brady amendment last week that was voted through and insisted that May’s Deal has an alternative to the backstop. So far, as I mentioned earlier and everyday the only viable alternatives to a backstop are not Brexiting or having a big fuck off physical border. But he has said that he’ll accept a delay if there is a deal in place. So, in order to get more time to work out what should happen, they have to work out what should happen first. It’s Schrodinger’s Brexit, in that its been a dead cat all along but no one wants to let the owner know. A delay may be the way though as Foreign Secretary and plastic bag in a weak wind Jeremy Hunt has suggested that Brexit may go into Extra Time, meaning an article 50 extension but sounding more like he’s making sure there’ll be adequate space for more own goals before we suffer penalties.

Reports have come from Downing Street that Theresa May’s next plan is to bribe Labour MPs in Northern leave voting areas by giving them extra funding, in the hope they’ll vote for her plan and counter any Tory rebels who’ll vote against it. This throws up a lot of issues both on the loyalty of Labour members, but also where May keeps finding money from to buy votes? Are we going to find out the ten-year NHS funding plan has been scrapped because John ‘I’ll do anything to get on TV’ Mann wanted a new postbox? Also, if May can only win votes by essentially purchasing them, then why don’t we, as a country, tell her if she funds everything properly, we’ll all vote Tory next time and see if it works?

Meanwhile the EU are making loads of headway with their post Brexit plans, promising visa free travel for UK citizens to EU countries, which is great as that’ll make it much easier for us Brits when we need to seek asylum. In the same legislation the EU have referred to Gibraltar as a UK colony which the government have objected to and said that it’s part of the UK family, ie a colony but full of white people. However, nothing is making more headway than hysterical no deal possibilities with British officials restoring cold war plans to evacuate the Queen is it all goes wrong. Though I guess once they’ve evacuated her, she’ll finally be able to stop sitting on the throne so much. HAHAH POO JOKE. Speaking of which, it turns out that export licenses for millions of tons of rubbish will all become invalid in a no deal, and the Environmental Agency have warned that we will have stockpiled putrefying waste. Yes there is literally nothing about Brexit that isn’t also a perfect metaphor for…well, Brexit. It is actually trashing the country.

UKIP leader and rejected In The Night Garden character Gerard Batten has asked the Queen to suspend parliament until Brexit to stop them ruining it, proving he’s definitely confused about what sovereignty means. I have a feeling it was the 7^th or 8^th letter he sent her that day, with previous ones including asking where she gets her jackets from, followed by love letters and dick pics taken with a flash lamp. I’m starting to wonder if the Queen drafted the evacuation procedure herself.

In other news Transport Secretary and Squidward’s haunted twin Chris Grayling says that people only have a go at him because he’s pro-Brexit and is a lightening rod for the anti-Brexit brigade. Lightening rod? Chris mate, you could barely conduct a bus. It is amazing that a man who hired a ferry companies with no ferries and is regularly behind the complete meltdown of the railways thinks people only hate him because of Brexit. No Chris, its that and all the other potentially dangerous vehicles you have no control over. Maybe he should stick to just working on aviation transport as he’s very adept at keeping his head in the clouds while everything else crashes down around him.

Labour party finances are set to go into the red, which isn’t great apart from the whole party colours thing. More staff, LabourLive being well, dead, and a drop in members mean they are now in deficit. Critics say this is a terrible sign as to what they’d do to the country if they were in charge, completely forgetting that most people would prefer a government to pay for workers wages and fun events, rather than 11 DUP MPs to come and scowl in the gallery like they’ve witnessed someone using cutlery incorrectly. Still, all Labour have to do is drop Theresa May a line and pretend they’ll vote for her and in no time they should be funded pretty well for the foreseeable future.

And a number of Conservative MPs including walking anemia Jacob Rees Mogg have tweeted supportive messages for islamaphobic rightwing youth group Turning Point, so called because none of them have hit puberty quite yet. The US group that they originate from are well known for staging a diaper protest against safe spaces, by turning up to Kent State university in nappies and with soothers, only for social media to use all those images to absolutely mock them as massive adult babies and ruin the group to the point of disbanding. Still that probably explains Rees Mogg’s backing of them, I guess he assumes they also have nannies that care as much as his does.

Lastly, Happy New Year to any Chinese listeners. 2019 is the year of the pig so it should mean a rise in Trotskism, potential promotion for Scottish Labour MP and elongated Kevin Bridges Paul Sweeney, the government to keep making a pig’s ear of Brexit and former Prime Minister and dropped pate David Cameron is likely to try and fuck this year up too.

And creepy cutlery vandal Uri Geller says he will use his telepathic abilities to make sure Jeremy Corbyn never becomes Prime Minister, though it’ll be pretty rich of him to claim credit for the Labour leader yet again coming across a difficult fork in the road.

ADMIN

Hey ParPolBrods, how’s your wintery February coming along? I hope you haven’t been too snowed in. Isn’t it amazing how there’s all this talk about pathetic snowflakes, and yet this past week they halted the UK and the US. Once again I didn’t really get any here in London, because property prices are so high even snow can’t settle here anymore. You’ll be relieved to know there’s only one podcast this week. I mean, two last week was a bit much wasn’t it? Especially as I for some reason thought it’d be a great idea to do that despite all the family illness. It wasn’t chicken pox my daughter had but hand, foot and mouth, which I think if it gets worse becomes head, shoulders, knees and toes. Anyway despite its name its nothing like foot and mouth which cows get, though I’m guessing that’s mainly because they don’t have hands so the virus has to go all in rather than spread itself too thinly. No, I actually don’t have a clue. But my daughter had it, and then my wife got it but I didn’t, like some legend, or more, as I assume, once again despite my best efforts, I failed to go viral. But yeah I still did two podcasts like an idiot and thank you to those of you who listened to both for Esyllt’s excellent welsh politics chat and my awful pronunciations of her name. Which I’ve just probably done again.

It is definitely a one pod week this week as not much is going on, while everyone spends their time trying to work out what is going on. And thank you for listening to this week’s one pod, and also mega thanks to the three of you that reviewed the show on iTunes last week which was much appreciated. And don’t forget you can do that too, on iTunes, or on podbean or on a banana as a surprise for fruit enjoyers or spiders. But as I boringly mention and yes, I know how boring it is, but I wouldn’t have to do it if everyone in the entire world and some aliens all reviewed the show, so maybe do that everyone and aliens? Thanks. But it supposedly does persuade others to listen to it and sites like Apple to actually feature it. But that may all be a pod dream. Anyway, its still mostly best just to actually tell people about the show and tweet, Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn about it just so some confidence therapist in Seattle knows about it. I really don’t understand how Linkedin works. It’s as though its where fun goes to die. I invented a made up name for where I work, something unimaginative like Tiernan Incorporated, and still every year people congratulated me on working there. Total jobsworths. Oh and if you can donate to patreon.com/parpolbro which I mean, is patreon just falling apart? Who knows. But if you have any concerns about donating there, then do donate monthly or oncely to ko-fi.com/parpolbro instead and thank you to the anonymous donor who did that last week if you likey.

Are you in Leicester? Have you heard of Leicester in a film or book? Are you Lester Piggot? Either of those is great because you can then come to my shambles show at the Leicester Comedy Festival on Sunday 10^th February at the Queen of Bradgate at 8pm. Bec Hill is doing her show before me which will actually be good so why not come to both? You can grab tickets at comedy-festival.co.uk if you fancy that. It will be a mix of politics stuff, parenting stuff, other thoughts and some ideas that probably aren’t actually funny yet. FUN!

Also our kids politics show ‘How Does This Politics Thing Work Then?’ as I mentioned last week, starts again next week at The Place in Bedford on 13^th February, at 6pm and then at GLive in Guildford on the 16^th at 2pm and please, if you live round there, bring your kids to that because I think at the moment its just me and Tatton twiddling our thumbs in an empty room. Loads more dates too but I’ll update more next week.

And lastly I just wanted to say how sad I was that Jeremy Hardy passed away last week. I’m sure you knew of him, but if not, he was a truly wonderful comedian and satirist, known for many things but especially his work on Radio 4 on his own show and the News Quiz among others, and while I didn’t know him as well as some of my pals, I was super lucky enough to work with him a few times. The last time was at a fundraiser for Justice Mexico Now last year and he just blew the crowd away with 30 minutes of absolute brilliance. He died so young at 57 and he’s already very missed. But do check out some of his work if you can as he was always an inspiration for me.

Right, this week’s show has a chat with Nazek Ramadan from Migrant Voice about how the Home Office basically scammed tens of thousands of international students, and I also speak to Nomi, one of those very students too who was kind enough to talk to me about the really horrible time he’s had as a result of the very anti-immigration stance that department has taken for several years now. Plus there’s some Brexit Fallout mainly just to fill time because I still don’t really know what the point is and wish it would just end. Not even in a Remainery it needs to stop or a Leavey it needs to happen now way. I just want it all to end. I’d prefer it if we just had a men in black style memory eraser and wake up with absolutely no knowledge of what happened and everyone goes back to complaining about tax avoidance and cereal cafes again. Good times. Oh, and there’s also this:

HEADLINES

Buses

You know what they say about buses right? You wait for ages for one and then none turn up because all the services have been cut and you have to walk and its raining and oh what’s the point? Bus service cuts were highlighted this week when Jeremy Corbyn had to get a lift to a meeting in Nottinghamshire discussing them because the Number 21 didn’t arrive for ages. Yes you make your own jokes about Corbyn going nowhere but bus cuts are a pretty big problem for a lot of people who need to get on the bus and go up and down, up and down, up and down. Yes, you can tell I’ve had to sing my daughter to sleep recently. The Little Baby Bum version of wheels on the bus has a whole verse about a lion on the bus who says see you soon. That’s totally a threat right? Sorry, what I mean is, in the past eight years more than 3000 bus routes in England and Wales have been cut, which means about 85m journeys less than there used to be. Basically, there’s a lot of places now where lions have to just threaten you in the street. Council bus budgets have been cut by 45% since 2010 due to government cuts and two thirds of councils cut their spending or haven’t spent anything on buses in the last two years. Now that’s a lot of facts and figures but when it comes down to it, that means there are a lot of people who can’t get to work without a car, lots of elderly or disabled people who can’t travel anywhere, one Jeremy Corbyn who can’t make meetings and several dismayed lions. My wife’s nan, nan in law? Law Nan? Hmm, anyway she lives in Oxfordshire in a village where they’ve scrapped the only bus there was. She has bad knees and now, as a result, can’t go into town at all and is basically trapped at home unless someone gives her a lift. This sort of thing really goes against the government’s plans to tackle loneliness when they won’t even provide people with the means to get so annoyed with kids on the bus playing music from their phones that they’re happy to be at home by themselves in the quiet again.

Councils give private firms money to run routes they can’t afford to run commercially. But if that funding is cut, so are the buses, and so is people’s access to jobs & schools and an increase in cars and air pollution. Parts of country, such as Ramsey in Cambridgeshire are 12 miles away from the job centre in Huntingdon, but the Number 30 bus that connects the two is being cut end of March, so if claimants don’t want sanctions, they’ll have a 24 mile walk each day. Labour are saying that if they ever get into government they’ll invest in bus routes and introduce a free pass for under 25s, which sounds great if you’re under 25 and if you’re not also begs the question of isn’t that less money being collected for buses though? The government have of course said they’ve put £250m each year into bus services and £1bn into free travel for the elderly, but that’s like paying for a single on a return journey, in that it’s not enough for what’s needed and it’ll end up causing more trouble than just doing it properly. But it is the department of transport, so there’s every chance if Chris Grayling did step in and try to actually do something about it, he’d hire a bus firm with no buses and then he’d blame the bus passengers for not wanting to board a bus that isn’t there, before demanding they stop ruining bus travel and come up with a solution themselves. Still it does increase the chances of him bumping into an angry lion.

INTERVIEW WITH NAZEK & RAJA

Where I record this podcast is a tiny, overfilled cupboard of a room, where you have to climb over 4 piles of baby clothes, toys and nappies in order to get to the inadequately small desk covered in a variety of letters I probably should read, a plant that is definitely dying, an old 1980’s rancor monster star wars toy and two dead moths. Yes two. I feel one encouraged the other. Oh, and it’s also always cold. Yet despite all that, I’m still pretty sure that my home office is a damn site more welcoming than the governments. Sure, I’ve made admin errors while doing my work, but the worst its caused is me double booking an appointment or making a spelling error that caused people on twitter to be sad about for a week. I’ve never made an error so bad that 63 people got deported from their country of citizenship. But as if to hammer that the foreign office is just for them places far away, the home office seems to insist that unless you were born on their very clerks’ desks before their very eyes, then your citizenship may be up for grabs so Sajid Javid’s and his wrecking lives crew can add your departure to an impossible reduction in immigration numbers to the tens of thousands. As well unlawfully deporting many of Windrush generation, enforcing a hostile environment policy that really isn’t needed when the Prime Minister has the body language of a siege engine and mistakenly detaining 850 people, whoops eh? They have also waged a stupid war against international students, refusing to remove them from the overall immigration figures despite their coming to the UK bringing income, and credibility with them.

Its recently emerged that between 2011 and 2014 the Home Office accused tens and thousands of people, who were mostly students, of cheating on a required English language test that’s needed for Visa renewal. You know, the one people have to take in order to work and study here, whereas if you’re already here, you’re fully allowed to get their, there and they’re confused on a daily basis. But the Home Office have no evidence of this, and yet still detained, and threatened with deportation many students who were consequently kicked off their courses, and now unable to work or well, do anything, when they should be finishing their courses. I mean fair play to the Home Office for so virulently mishandling citizenship and education issues all at once like some sort of master Conservative department. This week I spoke to Nazek Ramadan, the director of Migrant Voice, a migrant lead organization empowering migrants to speak out. She told me all about what happened, what these students have gone through and what should be being done about it. I then spoke to Nomi, a Pakistani student who is a victim of these accusations and has been fighting them for 5 years. The way in which Nomi has been treated is pretty sickening and once you’ve listened to this episode, please do check out Migrant Voice online and sign their petition to get the Home Office to at the very least, investigate this properly. First up, here’s Nazek:

INTERVIEW WITH NAZEK

That was Nazek from Migrant Voice and in a minute you’ll hear my interview with Nomi, but first…

BREXIT FALLOUT

Yeah I’m sorry, this again. Turns out its still happening. Just endlessly whining like a very large deflating bouncy castle, the sight of which makes no one happy. If you love bouncy castles because of all that they provide in terms of fun and you know, bouncing, right there, its collapsing. If you hate them, you’ve now got an annoying noise, lots of crying children and a massive collapsed bouncy castle to deal with. No one’s enjoying it, that’s what I’m saying.

So, if May doesn’t bring a revised plan to the House of Commons by February 13^th, then she is sent into the Cursed Earth to try and survive against a menagerie of radioactive horrors. No sadly that’s not true. The aim is that she’ll have a revised deal and then on Valentine’s Day MPs will get to amend it, because there’s nothing more romantic than putting all your energy into a motion. That doesn’t quite work but it did in my head. Then if it doesn’t pass, she can do all that all over again until suddenly it’s March 30^th and time hasn’t frozen and now no one has any courgettes. Or if it does pass then Article 50 really needs to be extended or the transition period elongated because the European Union Withdrawal Agreement Implementation Bill has to get passed in order for the UK to actually leave. YOU WHAT NOW? YOU MEAN THE DEAL BIT ISN’T IT? Oh no my friend. It was merely the tweeted GIF of the title, previewing a teaser trailer that in itself previews the trailer that previews the film that you didn’t want to see in the first place. The Withdrawal Agreement Implementation Bill, or WAI Bill as I like to call it, as though we are all questioning what on earth Bill has been doing, has to work out payment for the so called divorce bill which isn’t a divorce bill its for services we have already agreed to for the time that are in the EU WHY DOES NO ONE REMEMBER OR READ ANYTHING? Sorry. It has to do that and provide protection for EU citizens rights in the UK, and the overriding ruling of EU law during the transition period. Yeah that last bit is all about the European Court of Justice still being in charge until the transition period is over, which is the sort of thing that Brexiteers will lose their mind over even though it really won’t matter to them unless they do something highly illegal. Oh wait. Oh, I see. Anyway, somehow despite not being able to pass the deal that gets us to that bit over 3 months, the government then have to somehow pass all that before March 29^th. Why do I for see a weird montage of commons debates, with MPs collapsing with tiredness during weird shouty statements, as a clock ticks all to, ironically, Europe’s Final Countdown? This is why there’s no break for MPs over February. No time for pancakes, because they are already flipping all over the place with several acting like useless tossers.

It’s unlikely the EU are going to budge on any of the things they’ve been saying for two years they won’t budge on either. That’s just self-preservation. If they say ‘hey UK you do what you want’ it’s only a matter of time before recession hit Italy swans up and asks to do what they like, then the Netherlands and others and suddenly the EU is a party where everyone is on their own phones drinking their own booze and no one can decide what music plays. Hint: It’s Europe’s Final Countdown again. So really either May can buy out rogue Labour MPs which means Labour will probably look into disciplinaries for those who accept, or May has to convince her own party, or she has to head into the Cursed Earth and fight a cloned Tyrannasaurus. Ah yeah sorry, that’s still not an option. So lame.

This week I thought it might be fun to quickly highlight some things Brexit will affect that you may not have known about. And by fun, I mean awful. It might be awful.

DO YOU KNOW WHAT BREXIT DOES?

IT AFFECTS EVERYTHING IN THE UNIVERSE

OK NOT THE UNIVERSE BUT IN THE UK

SO WHAT DO YOU THINK BREXIT GONNA AFFECT TODAY?

CLUE: EVERYTHINK

Brexit could affect 1.7m people in some of the least developed countries in the world. Yes I can’t see that argument persuading human verruca Iain Duncan Smith either, if anything, it’s probably an extra bonus for him. The EU has an initiative called Everything But Arms, which allows all imports to the EU from the 14 least developed countries in the world to be duty and quota free on everything except, yep, arms. Like it says on the tin. So things like sugar, rice and bananas even though you can pretend a banana is a gun. I think that’s still ok. But countries like Cambodia sell 7.7% of its exports to the UK. Without the UK as part of the EU, they’ll lose that tariff free trading, at least for a while. But yes as I said, trying to persuade those who strongly want Brexit that it’s bad because it’ll harm other countries is a bit pointless. Still, I look forward to their faces when there’s increased migration from countries who can no longer support themselves due to the UK’s choices. See, I was right huh? Awful.

Brexit could cause a lack of isotopes used in hospitals. Isotopes are not apple’s new, er, sotopes, but instead radioactive elements used for treating tumours and cancer. The UK currently has access to isotopes because we’re part of Eurotom, a group that tells you if you’re Tom or not. Not really, it’s an internal EU organization that works as a market for nuclear power and ionizing radiation and the safeguarding of such materials. By leaving Eurotom, we’d leave the agreements to have those things transported safely, and isotopes decay pretty quickly so delays at customs could mean they’re ruined before they get here. So once again arguments between different political cells have a cancerous effect…no wait, this one is too awful to even have a good gag about it.

And lastly 250,000 expats could return to the UK, about 40% of which will be pensioners and in need of NHS treatment. Yes, we’ve got rid of doctors and we’re gaining people who’s only talents are running a sports bar into bankruptcy and robbing trains! If some of the ex-pats returning were actually born abroad then they’ll fall victim to the Home office’s hostile environment policy and be denied healthcare and benefits. Yeah take that scrounging Brits, coming back here and taking all the benefits and jobs. That’ll show ‘em. I hope Sajid Javid quits his safari holiday early to shoo them away at Dover, warning others of their aggressive wanker signs and frighteningly bad tattoos.

Anyway, I’m sure that’s all helped you feel much better. I look forward to updating you next week when it turns out Brexit will raise Cthulu from the seas and Disgraced MP Liam The Disgrace Fox will be on tv trying to promote our new trade in calamari.

And now we return to my conversation with Nomi:

INTERVIEW PART 2

Many thanks to Nazek and Nomi for having time to talk with me. It’s so saddening to hear what Nomi went through and I honestly can’t imagine just how terrifying it’d be having 20 immigration officers storm in to where you live, before detaining you for 4 and a half months without warning. That is the absolute stuff of nightmares. You can find Migrant Voice and information on all their campaigns at migrantvoice.org or on Facebook and Twitter @migrantvoiceuk. The petition for justice for all the international students who’s lives have been ruined by the Home Office is their pinned tweet so please do sign and share.

I NEED GUESTS! Every week I need one, yes, it’s almost an addiction, I should probably be concerned. Who else should I speak to on this show and what about? Please let me know what you want to hear, even if it’s just 40 minutes of white noise that you can play when the news is on, so you miss it entirely and feel slightly more content. Of course, a suggestion of someone to interview or a subject to interview someone about would also be great. And of course, you can drop 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 you could send me an odorific message of whoever it is I should contact, and I’ll have to guess who you mean by the smell. For example, if for some weird reason you wanted me to interview Disgraced MP Liam The Disgrace Fox, you could waft the smell of old bullshit into a jiffy bag. Or if you wanted me to interview, for some reason Barry Gardiner, then you could also use the same smell. Or if you wanted me to interview Esther McVey… Yeah I can see this might not work. As always, it’s much easier if you just email, yeah?

END

And that’s all for this week’s Partly Political Broadcast podcast. Billions of cheers m’dears to your ears for listening in again this week. Please do review the show on your podcast apps, or oddcast papps or adcast pops or tadcast baps. Whatever you prefer. Also donate to the ko-fi or patreon if you can afford to, so I can use it to help me stockpile podcast, er, juice incase of a no deal. And please spread the word about the show to loved ones, and probably more so, to unloved ones so they feel slightly loved until they listen to this and hear I’ve described them as unloved and then they feel betrayed and worse than they did before, life is complicated.

Danke Schon to Acast for embracing this show in their giant audio arms, to my brother The Last Skeptik for all the sounds and to Kat Day for all the linear liner notes for every show that end up on partlypoliticalbroadcast.co.uk

This will be back next week when the Alternative Arrangments Working Group announce an alternative to the backstop and reveal it to be Uri Geller who will stand at the border shouting what he believes to be in your vehicle and accidentally ruining a lot of bicycles.

BYEEEEEEEEEEE

This week’s show was sponsored by Mister Buses’s Guide To Rural Bus Routes containing 484 pages of blank white paper for you to draw pictures of buses in while you wait for a bus that isn’t there. Mister Buses’s Guide To Rural Bus Routes, catch it now before you catch a cold standing in the rain for eternity because there is no bus. You’ve got no bus. Stop waiting for a bus. Start walking. Seriously.

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