Further Reading

Linear liner notes

No to absolutely everything. Except an episode jam packed with Tiernan’s (@tiernandouieb) general disappointment at the state of British democracy, punctuated by an actually positive interview with Tom Canham (@tcanham459) from Drag Queen Story Time (@dqst_uk) about LGBT+ rights and lessons in schools. Plus Article 13 or is it 15, or possibly 17?

Links and sources of info from Tom’s interview:

• • Tom on Twitter – https://twitter.com/tcanham459
• • Drag Queen Story Time on Twitter – https://twitter.com/dqst_uk
• • Drag Queen Story Time website – https://dragqueenstorytime.com/
• • Enquire about a Drag Queen Story Time booking – https://dragqueenstorytime.com/contact
• • Schools-Out website – http://www.schools-out.org.uk/
• • LGBT History Month on Twitter – https://twitter.com/LGBTHM
• • TIE Campaign on Twitter – https://twitter.com/tiecampaign
• • TIE Campaign website – https://www.tiecampaign.co.uk/ 
• • Olly Pike on Twitter – https://twitter.com/ollypike
• • Pop ‘n’ Olly on Twitter – https://twitter.com/PopnOlly
• • Pop ‘n’ Olly website – https://www.popnolly.com/

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

Ep137

Hello and welcome to the Partly Political Broadcast, the political comedy podcast that asks the big questions such as is May’s Deal the UK’s endless Sisyphean punishment because we’ve angered the gods? As well as the smaller questions like if you’re sad about Dominic Grieve’s getting a vote of no confidence is that Grieve Grieving? This is episode 137, I’m Tiernan Douieb and this week the clocks went forward so isn’t it nice to know that at least something in the UK is progressing in the right direction?

MPs have once again said no to absolutely everything, which makes me realise they’d be a really shit improv group. The votes took place after environmental campaigners Extinction Rebellion took to the public gallery and stripped off down to thongs before glueing themselves to the viewing glass, and yet that was only the first time that evening that the Commons was stuck with poorly concealed thin divides.

The week began with Prime Minister and scorched hedgerow Theresa May agreeing to resign once Brexit reaches its second phase which is a clever choice of words from someone who knows that as she brings back the same deal again and again, and Brexit is extended forever more while the UK remains in a perpetual state of limbo with a very, very low bar, we may never reach that point and she will remain like the political barnacle she is. Calling it a second phase really sounds like it’s part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, only one where you wish Thanos would have wiped out absolutely everyone. Try, try and try again said the spider to Robert The Bruce before he went on to kick British bum at the battle of Bannockburn, despite just moments before hallucinating about talking spiders. But if that spider had been talking to Theresa May, it probably would’ve witnessed her fail again and again and after shouting ‘give up’ at her 600-700 hundred times, it’d have carefully strung its web into a noose and hung itself out of despair. On Friday May brought back the meaningful vote on her deal only it was only on the Withdrawal Agreement which was sealing off the past agreements, and not on the political declaration which was about the future. Because why would you want to consider the future when your life is stuck in the same awful moment again and again like a recurring war flashback? But unsurprisingly, the House of Commons said no, only less of it said no than before with several politicians who had previously damned May’s Deal as the worst thing for the country now convinced by her promise of going if it passed. But I guess why would you care about the future of the island you live on, if chances are high that you’ll get to spend the eternal purge hiding in a luxury bunker under Whitehall and only emerge when the last two plebs have eaten other?

Yes that’s right, former Foreign Secretary and beanbag stuffed with hay and manure Boris Johnson announced that he had some to the sad conclusion that he had to back May’s deal, on account of the possibilities of him being Prime Minister raising slightly, if you ignore that he has no popularity among Conservatives and even less amongst the British public. But hey, since when has reality or facts held Boris back? Previously, he’d resigned over that deal and then just days before he announced that May’s deal was dead, and then within 48 hours he was gripping that corpse and trying to thrust life back into it hoping it might reanimate his also much deceased career.

Human barcode that when scanned comes up with a very costly error Jacob Rees Mogg also u-turned on his opinion on May’s deal that he had previously said would turn the UK into a slave state. Although admittedly, with him we weren’t entirely sure if he thought that was a good or bad thing. But after May’s resignation promise, Rees Mogg said it was better to have half a loaf of bread than none at all, which is rich coming from a man who will never be in that situation due to lots of inherited dough. Many Leave voters and Brexiteers were angry with Rees-Mogg for going back on his word, which is odd as that’s the one defining characteristic that I thought they all had in common. Former Brexit secretary and sunburnt knee Dominic Raab also said he’d back the deal that he previously resigned over despite negotiating it, which must’ve been because he’d just learned that past the sky is space and didn’t understand it and just needed to be near people to stop him from crying.

Not all the Brexiteers were convinced though and Mr Muscle’s illegitimate sickly child and chair of the ERG Steve Baker got so angry at the turncoating of his colleagues that he announced at a group meeting that he was so angry he could ‘tear this place down and bulldoze it into the river’. Which is big talk for a man who looks like he’d need a sit down after opening a door.

Of course, May’s Deal was rejected in the least surprising development so far as we all know based the films, that the third part of the trilogy is always the worst, and no one was ever going to go for the Prime Minister’s reboot of Godfather part 3. I would find it hilarious that the likes of Boris or Raab pointlessly betrayed their own principles but that’d mean pretending they had principles and that every comment they make isn’t just their overcrowded brains flushing words out in the hope it’ll get them a sandwich. All the newspapers said everyone who didn’t vote for it was a traitor to British democracy, even though just weeks before the same papers said the deal itself was traitorous to British democracy. Is this why May just keeps bringing it back to be rejected? Is that the only way to not betray anyone by both having it and voting against it all at once? It feels like the only person who can solve Brexit is someone who’s immensely good at riddles like Oedipus or Giles Brandreth. Danny Dyer was totally right.

So, what next? Earlier in the week MPs had indicative votes on eight alternative Brexit options ranging from no deal, to a Norway type option to Labour’s deal to revoking article 50, and again, unsurprisingly, MPs voted against absolutely all of them because Brexit is so shit, that even non-Brexit options have been ruined by it. What they should have had on there was an option to erase Brexit from all our minds using one of those devices from Men In Black and I reckon it’d be unanimous. Its either that or coin flipping, pulling random words out of a bag until you have a new deal or getting everyone to do a Ouija board and see what the undead think. Sorry, I mean the Lords. Out of all of them aligning with the EU customs union and the motion for a second referendum were most popular and so more indicative votes were brought in for Monday. But again, on that vote, much like a cocaine addict’s party, the no’s had everything. Motions for a customs union, a commons market 2.0, a second referendum, and parliamentary supremacy were all voted against, albeit in some cases by only a handful of votes because various members would only vote for the one they liked and not others that they weren’t actually opposed to. Labour leader and fully realized Robert Crumb sketch Jeremy Corbyn said that Theresa May got to bring her deal back three times and that was defeated by a much larger margin than several of the alternatives so why not bring the popular ones back for a third vote too but at the time of recording no one has agreed on that either.

But it also looks like May might bring her deal back again for MV4, more meaningful, more voting, because she has absolutely no other ideas than just repeatedly wearing the commons down. If she was a door to door sales person, rather than accept a polite refusal and try another door, she’d just ring on the same doorbell again and again for 3 weeks straight, never leaving, always saying the same thing, until the residents were forced to buy self-help books just to make her go. Which she then wouldn’t do even if she promised and they’d find her parading around by the bins later that day, insisting that another salesperson would have done it worse. Is there any chance an unchanged fourth vote will go through? No.  The DUP still won’t back it, with the party’s Brexit spokesperson and the one in the 80’s comedy double act who had to quit due to alcoholism Sammy Wilson said they’d oppose May’s Deal even if she brought it to the Commons 1000 times, which is a stupid comment as that’ll only persuade her to think there’s hope if she presents it for a 1001^st.

Conservative Chief Whip and dog from the Beano Julian Smith has said that a soft Brexit is inevitable but I’m not sure how soft it is if you put a sheet over a bed of spikes then leap at it from 300ft.

There have been talks about May calling a general election but other Conservatives have warned her that if she does, her party will be even more annihilated as they’re currently neck & neck or lower than Labour in the polls. But also with May promising to step down, voters would have no idea who they’d be giving licence to be PM if they voted Conservative. Imagine that? You put down your vote for May, and within days prosthetic anus Michael Gove is prancing around number 10 in his red shorts demanding everyone refer to him as supreme leader while misquoting Game Of Thrones and trying to bring back capital punishment. Dildo bitten by a vampire Iain Duncan Smith is also considering taking part in Conservative leadership contests because nothing says reliable candidate like someone who was so bad at being Tory leader last time, he was replaced by Michael Howard, an MP who is best known for looking like he eats children. Is Theresa May the worst prime minister the UK has ever had? It does depend on what criteria you’re looking at, but if that includes uselessness, stubbornness, racism, and a legacy that mainly involves driving the UK so hard into the ground that we’re likely to become a subterranean nation of morlocks and molepeople by 2030, then yes she is. Yet, it feels entirely possible based on her list of potential successors they’ll all be asking Theresa to hold their beer within minutes.

On Friday there was a March to Leave demonstration of thousands of pro-Brexit campaigners who descended on parliament to protest at being betrayed by the UK not leaving on March 29^th. I guess it’d be like a kid being told they were going on holiday on a specific date but not being told where to, or how they were getting there and then they’re angry it hasn’t happened despite the parents knowing full well the holiday company has gone bust and so it’s better to stay at home than walk into the sea. The crowd were addressed by prolapsed turkey Nigel Farage who said that what had happened over the last two years was one of the saddest and worst chapters in the history of our nation, which is a pretty big statement when it’s up against, I dunno, the black plague or the war. But if it is the one of the worst, then I’m sure that’s largely down to him being a big part of it, regularly making us retch when he appears on the news to fart out of his mouth. Far right campaigner and man who’s face like a skinned pug’s anus proves that he’s not part of the master race Tommy Robinson told the march that they had been betrayed. Well that must be true if a man who doesn’t use his real name and uses his donations from supporters to eat crisps all day in his £1m mansion in Bedfordshire rather than getting a real job. Channel 4 News had to issue an apology after presenter Jon Snow reported on the march by saying he’d never seen so many white people in one place, which seemed to be an accurate description and also proves he’s never been skiing before. Still maybe accurate descriptions just aren’t wanted by the public anymore and hearing such things was probably a shock. I hope they balance it out by speaking to a member of the public who’s never been outdoors before and the head of a group who believe lion people rule space.

But it’s not just on the leave march that the far right had a presence. Conservative MP and what if there was a Tory version of Cbeebies Suella Braverman spoke at a meeting in Westminster where she used the alt-right term ‘cultural Marxism’ which does sound like it could be a good thing where all theatre tickets are priced the same, but actually it stems from an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory and was a large part of Norwegian terrorist Anders Brevik’s ‘manifesto’ as well as the one written by the murderer in New Zealand a few weeks ago. Braverman’s response was simply to say that she believes we are in a war and that no one can get offended. Hmm, I’m pretty sure most wars start because one side is more offended than the other by something the other side is doing. I don’t think Syria kicked off because everyone sat around agreeing.

Then on Sunday, Jacob Rees Mogg retweeted a speech by the leader of German far right party AfD, but Mogg said he wasn’t supporting them, just showing a speech of real importance. Which is supporting them. Hi I’m not endorsing these incredibly tasty crisps I’m eating, I just want you to know how good they are and how much you should buy them.

The constant rise of the far right and full on integration of their values into mainstream politics is terrifying but we can all seek solace that a new form of politics is here in the shape of the Independent Group, who have now applied to become a proper party by the name of Change UK, which sounds a lot like one of those machines at supermarkets you put your 1 & 2p coins into because they’re annoying. It’s also been pointed out that their initials will now spell CUK, which is both an alt-right term used by men who are afraid of sex, and an old Shakesperian slur, both insinuating that you let others have sex with your partner, who is usually in their instance’s female. But I think that suits the TIGgers, as most of their luke warm ideas seem to suggest they’d ideally stand by as another party fucks their country. So far the CUK’s newest plans involve trying to get a Mexican wave started in the Commons to which the DUP refused to join in and I hate that Change UK have made me like the DUP for once, bastards, refusing to vote for the indicative motion on aligning with a customs union as they’d only back their own motion for a second referendum, and insisting we shouldn’t have a general election as we know they’d be wiped out before they could pay millions to a hipster to design them a new logo where their logo looks like the French Connection one because that’s the sort of original thing they’d do.

The CUK’s may be getting a new member soon though as Conservative MP and Odo from Deep Space Nine Dominic Grieve has lost a vote of no confidence brought by his local Conservative party. Knowing Grieve he probably very vocally opposed it and then when it came to the crunch, voted against himself. The vote happened because they believed Grieve wasn’t representing his constituents by being opposed to Brexit, even though his area of Beaconsfield, voted 51% to Remain so by being an MP who opposed Brexit but kept hampering his own motions, I think he did pretty well. They may also have gained Conservative MP and if he exists somewhere out there must be a six year old boy with an old man’s face Nick Boles who announced he was leaving the Conservative party after his motion for a Commons Market 2.0 was defeated and he said it was all down to the Tories refusing to compromise. I mean just on the basis that he has principles suggests he was probably in the wrong party anyway.

The Vote Leave campaign withdrew their appeal over the Electoral Commision’s decision that they had exceeded spending limits during the referendum. This means they have admitted to electoral fraud, although the campaign say it’s because they’ve run out of money, as the Russians are too busy bothering Venezuela right now to help out. Ex-chairwoman and that great aunt you can’t stand Gisela Stuart said that their biggest problem was that they destroyed all the data of their campaign so didn’t have the evidence the Electoral Commision were asking for. Yeah cool, that sounds like something you’d definitely do if you were innocent. Why not really protest your innocence by moving the campaign to Chad and insist you never existed in the first place? There is now so much evidence that the campaign was run illegally but no one in parliament really seems to care. Unless they consider this process to be the appropriate punishment, in which case, this is so awful, I think it stopped being retributive justice over a year ago.

Lastly, at a summit on youth violence, Theresa May said that the issue of knife crime needed a great cooperated effort from a numerous bodies which is a) like The Punisher saying you need calm diplomatic talks, and b) ‘numerous bodies’ perhaps isn’t the greatest choice of words for the subject matter. Plans look to put teachers and NHS staff accountable for failing to spot violent crime among young people which feels like the Conservatives have gone to the extreme of their ideas of cuts to public sector workers.

And lastly in Ukraine, a comedian with no background in politics other than playing the president in a tv show about a member of the public getting elected, is now the front runner to become President. Volodymyr Zelenskiy got 30% of the votes in the first round of the election, with the current leader only getting 16%. Still the establishment needn’t worry as if he wins, all they’ll have to do is flash a red light and he’ll wrap up and leave within seconds.

ADMIN

It’s April Fools! It was so bloody hard to tell what the pranks were this week. Liz Truss saying something stupid? No, that one was real. The Great British Chefs list of essential recipes for a post Brexit Britain including sea water soup and bbq’d pigeon? That one was fake but may also be real in a couple of weeks. Its yet another annual celebration ruined by current politics along with Darwin Day which has been rendered pointless by our society’s constant devolution and Halloween because everything else is far scarier than ghosts. But I hope you’re well and didn’t wake up to some sort of horrible prank where you’d had your breakfast replaced with the toenails of your enemies or someone swapped your bike for a gerbil or something. I’ll be honest, I’ve have never really put the effort into celebrating it. My weekend has been mostly spent trying to work out how to make a 1 year old go to sleep despite the clocks going forward and bedtime now being at a time when the sun is shining in her eyes, seemingly powering her up so she has even more energy to trash the place, while I’m singing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star like a man with nothing left to give. I’m guessing the inventor of British Summer Time was not the parent of small children or he’d have worked a lot harder at scrapping his own plans and instead spent time on some sort of valium but for kids instead.

How are you lot? I hope you’re not too burned out by the news. I am increasingly finding it hard for this podcast to point out in different ways just how awful the prime minister is and how endlessly boring and terrifying Brexit is. I’m moving flat on Friday and so my plan was to not have an episode next week but next week could be the last week before Brexit possibly, maybe, if it doesn’t just go on forever until all that’s left of the Earth is a radio signal transmitted past the solar system of May saying you have to back her deal in order to stop no deal. So I will try and churn out something but it may just be me mumbling between unpacked boxes, unless by some absolute miracle, it’s all pushed back to May 22^nd, everyone agrees to lie down and everyone sits very still for 7 days, then in which case I’ll have a week off. I’m so not getting a week off am I? Not till at least 2050. Anyway, thank you for listening all you lot who listen every week like champion ear wielders, and hello to new listeners too, I know some of you have very kindly subscribed after seeing my onstage breakdowns supporting Frankie Boyle in his warm up shows for the excellent New World Order that is back on BBC2 on Thursdays and very worth a watch if you don’t already. If you are a new listener, and for some bonkers reason you enjoy this show, then please do give it a review on your pod app of choice but especially iTunes because I only need 8 more till this show has a 150. Which isn’t even very much. Some shows have thousands. Do I want thousands of lovely reviews? Well yes, but for now, I’d take 8 more. If you can afford to, please donate to this show and buy me a coffee at ko-fi.com/parpolbro or at patreon.com/parpolbro and look, you don’t have to at all, this show is free but you know, you might be thinking ‘goddamn this should be paid for content’ out of the sheer moral goodness of your hearts and you might think that all this time I spend on the show, I could be out doing corporate gigs for companies that sell weapons to otters or something awful but I’m not and maybe you want to buy me a coffee to applaud that? Well please do. Of course if you can’t or won’t or couldn’t think of anything worse, then at least pop a mention on your twitters or facebooks or snapchats or talkmonkeys or speakwobbles or bleeters or piespace or whatever you use and let other people know to give this show a listen.

Speaking of the socials, some of you who follow the Parpolbro Twitter or are part of the Facebook group may have noticed how massively shit I am at running those things. That’s partly because on Twitter I also run my own account and keep all the best gags for that, meaning the ParPolBro twitter is just me endlessly and unimaginatively posting links to the show and nothing else, and the Facebook group is mostly the same apart from the efforts of some of you listeners posting actually good stuff. So the question is, is it worth me having those accounts? I’m not sure I have time to do much more with them but would any of you fancy running them and perhaps posting links to articles, politics discussions or good bits of satire like I mean to do? Any thoughts welcomed. Similarly, how many of you look at partlypoliticalbroadcast.co.uk? I’ve now added all of the scripts for the shows there, which doesn’t always include the interviews as only some of those are transcribed. The scripts also contain a ton of spelling and grammar errors and one day when I have time in my life which will be never, I’ll tidy those up. But still that’s all there now if you want to go back through the archives of my descriptions of MPs or how many times I’ve had to write about no one having a clue what to do with Brexit.

Last admin bit this week is that I’m on two other podcasts this week that aren’t this one. OMG what? I know right. Next thing you know the Sun will be calling me a traitor then in future weeks saying by not going on other podcasts that I’m also a traitor. I’m a guest on Danielle Ward’s excellent Any Stupid Questions where she, me and the very funny Kemah Breone Bob interview Councillor Tim Roca about, well, being a councilor. Then later in the week I’m on Hannah Dunleavey’s very fun podcast The Drink talking about terrible things I’ve done while drunk, all of which didn’t sound anywhere as entertaining as I told her about them than I thought they were. Please do check both of those out. Also I’m sure you all already listen to the amazing Blindboy podcast but if not, go back to his show in November of last year where he interviews the amazing Northern Irish politician Bernadette Devlin McAliskey who is now my new hero and I can’t believe I’ve not heard of her before and entirely blame the lack of education you get about Northern Ireland living in England.

On this week’s show there is an actually positive, optimistic interview which has completely thrown me because that isn’t what happens on this podcast. Its usually about the impending destruction of the planet or everyone being poor or everyone being nazis or how Nazis are planning the impending destruction of the planet by using poverty. Which actually, isn’t that far off the truth…. Hmmmm. Anyway, this week I chat to Tom Canham, creator of Drag Queen Story Time about LGBT+ issues and the whole chat left a lovely smile on my face. It’s a shame all the progress in wiping out prejudice that we talk about will all be wiped out by that Nazi plan eh? Oh well. Plus a very brief Brexit Fallout that will probably be incorrect the nanosecond after I release this podcast. It’s almost just on this week’s show out of tradition. And of course, there’s this:

HEADLINES

The trouble with internet laws is that no one involved in making them or in fact criticizing them ever looks online to see what its actually all about. Case in point is Article 13 which is now actually Article 15 because, no, actually I have no idea but I guess articles pushed in somewhere down the line or maybe it lied about its age to get into a film. I have no idea. Article 15 and also Article 17 which was Article 15 until Article 13 stole its parking space, was voted for in European Parliament last week and to cut a very long boring story short, it means that copyright laws will also apply to online sites too. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? Well it kinda depends on a number of things. Do you like stealing other people’s content and popping it online all for yourself whether that’s music, films, or damn sassy jokes? Then you won’t like this law much as sites such as YouTube, Facebook or Google will be held responsible if users uploaded copyright-protected content unless they can demonstrate they made their best efforts to get permission from the copyright holder, to make sure material specified by rights holders was not available and quickly remove any material once it was made aware. But obvs thems some pretty big sites. I mean have you seen youtube? There’s at least tens of videos on there. So this sort of law requires them to hire more staff to deal with it, or pre-emptively buy licences to cope with it, or something like that but no one is really sure yet because it’s not entirely clear how it will work or be enforceable. Those rules are just for companies that have an annual turnover of £10.8bn or more, but the bigger issue comes not with the big time websites but how it will affect everyone who uses the internet in Europe including those sites, which I think is at least 5-10 people I haven’t really checked, and all businesses that use it too. Some things have been made exempt such as hyperlinks, memes as works generated for purposes of quotation, criticism, review, caraicature, parody or pastiche are exempt. So, I think that means you can pop Avengers: Endgame up on Facebook as long as throughout it you make ‘duh’ noises and everytime someone says ‘Captain America’ you say ‘Smaptain Smemerica’.

It’s all a bit confusing though and on one hand it looks like it could be great for content creators who’ll be able to protect their work and earn from it being duplicated, but at the same time, things like computer game streaming may die as game artwork and music and other elements will all be covered. So that could be the end of people like PewDiePie who…oh no wait, maybe this law is amazing. Other parts of the law are not being debated at all and are welcomed, such as protections to keep public domain works uncopyrighted even after they’re digitized meaning they can still be used by researchers and cultural institutions. This has been praised by the Wikimedia Foundation, though citation is needed on that. This law may affect Britain unless Brexit kicks in before it does, and either way it has be passed in a vote by a majority of EU member states and then the directives have to be applied by them in exactly the same way. So it still might change over the next two years and in the meme time, you can enjoy making up your favourite 13 means 15 memes to your hearts content which I believe is exempt from copyright laws what with it being your own organ.

INTERVIEW

If you glimpse really, really closely into the heart of the swirling shitstorm that is British politics, if you’re really, really careful and really lucky, you may just, on a blue moon, capture a glimpse at a single nugget of sweetcorn, trapped in the heart of the excrement vortex. Last week, I know you’re not ready for this but, MPs did an actually good thing. No it’s an overdue April Fools. I’m not pulling your leg. I don’t even know where your leg is. Is that it? Oh god sorry no, it just felt very much like a le….I’m so sorry. I know its hard to believe these things when week in week out at the moment we’re just used to parliament being some sort of very poorly run anger management therapy group, but last week MPs voted in favour of LGBT inclusive relationship and sex education for schools in England. 538 MPs voted for the motion as put forward by Education Secretary and face of a boxer from a 60’s comic book Damien Hinds which will mean that children are taught about different family models from primary school, including same-sex couples and parents, lesbian, gay, bisexual and transsexual identities and how everybody is equally dysfunctional and awkward during puberty regardless of their gender and you’ll just have to deal with it spotty because you’ll get over it eventually, when you’re, I dunno, thirty something and now too old to have sex anymore without being exhausted. This move is long overdue and will hopefully curb prejudices and increase inclusion towards LGBTQI+ children from an early age. Which is still very much needed as has been seen recently in Birmingham and Manchester where angry religious parents have campaigned against the No Outsider program which teaches kids about LGBT identities. These parents have said that it goes against their religious beliefs, which is odd because in the Koran and Bible there’s a whole bit where it says its ok to have several wives or have sex with prisoners of war, and in the Bible loads of cases of incest too. So maybe they’re just angry these lessons are about very normal relationships instead of batshit ancient ones?

LGBT+ charity Stonewall say that 2 in 5 LGBT+ pupils aren’t taught anything about these issues in school and half of all LGBT+ pupils are still bullied for their identity so hopefully these new laws will begin to change that. Of course 21 MPs voted against it and you can probably guess which ones. Yes that’s right, several DUP ministers who shudder at the thought of anyone in love or smiling or enjoying the sunshine and need to stamp that out before it spreads. Then there was Chistropher Chope and Philip Davies who feel threatened by a same sex marriage as they wouldn’t feel comfortable being abusive to another man, and convict Fiona Onasanya who doesn’t want children to know about LGBT+ relationships but thinks its very like Jesus to get caught speeding then lie to police. He was such a complex figure that Christ eh? So this week’s interview is actually, for the first time in a millenia, a positive one as I got to speak to Tom Canham, who runs Drag Queen Story Time, a company who arrange for Drag Queens to visit schools and read children stories to teach them about inclusivity and acceptance of LGBT+ issues. We spoke before parliament had approved Hinds’ motion, but Tom still spoke to me about the progression of LGBT+ rights and awareness, the incredibly fun work that his company does and whether Rupaul’s Drag Race has done for Drag Queens what Live At The Apollo did for comedy, ie not as helpful as you might think. I hope this provides a positive pop to the Brexit bubble this week and that you enjoy this chat with Tom as much as I did.

Here’s Tom:

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

BREXIT FALLOUT

Its late, I’m tired and frankly there is little to report on anything Brexity other than still no one has the faintest idea what to do. May’s Deal has been voted down, the alternative possibilities have been voted down, albeit to a lesser extent and so that leaves the options as either May repeatedly brings her deal back again and again until so many MPs die of old age and boredom that she can pass it, MPs get another vote on alternative deals and actually pass one of them at which point the government has to allow a proper vote on it which probably wouldn’t pass because nothing makes sense or a No Deal, or a comet hits parliament and destroys it entirely and we start society again where everyone has to barter with potatoes and race goats to establish hierarchy.

The main thing is if there’s no deal agreement by April 12^th we flop out of the EU, like an exhausted lemming who hasn’t even got the energy to fall off a cliff properly. The only ways of stopping that are voting for a deal which won’t happen, at least not with May’s deal as Conservative MPs such as Richard ‘not from Guardians of the Galaxy’ Drax have now expressed regret at voting for her deal last week and so probably won’t do it again. At the time of recording there hasn’t been an agreed third vote on alternative options which may happen. Or May could crawl back to the EU and ask for an even longer extension which they may agree to as it was touted before meaning that we could have up to two more years of everyone saying no to everything before this all starts again, before which European elections would have to happen which will just annoy everyone on all sides not least schools who are having to ask parents to buy their children pencils yet here are these polling stations that the government have spent thousands on that have loads of pencils for people to use for a vote that may be entirely pointless. Or May could announce a general election in the hope she’d gain a majority in order to win through her deal, but she wouldn’t gain a majority and everyone knows that but she was also told that about her deal and still did it three times anyway so there’s every chance May will still do it. I swear there are mules that would’ve given up by now. But if May does call a general election, a whole lot of Conservative MPs have said they’ll block it and it could only go ahead if two thirds of parliament want it to, so then it wouldn’t. Labour could call a vote of no confidence but because that’d also essentially lead to a general election unless Corbyn could pull together a government in 14 days which he couldn’t because even his own MPs don’t want to be part of it, but chances are Conservatives would vote against it as the only thing they hate more than themselves is anyone else’s attempts to destroy their party. May could potentially call for a vote of no confidence in her own government but chances are she’s the only person who actually does have confidence in herself despite it being completely unfounded and her MPs hate her so much they’d probably block that too.

Someone is going to have to budge on something or the UN will have to intervene or perhaps May will pull in her red lines so tightly that heat seeking missiles being tested by a foreign power will mistake it for a target and we’ll all concede that actually rule by another country was best after all. I don’t know and to be honest, I’ve stopped caring. Time will tell and at the moment it says ‘can I put the clocks even more forward so we can fast forward all this shit?’ Sadly time, we can’t but I really, really wish we could. I may move the hands on my watch anyway and hope for the best.

And now back to Tom….

INTERVIEW PART 2

How nice is that? An actually positive interview on this show! I KNOW RIGHT? And as Tom said, you can find Drag Queen Story Time at dragqueenstorytime.com, or @dqst_uk on Twitter. Should you also wish to follow the much mentioned Andrew Moffat, he’s on Twitter @moffat_andrew.

Next week will be back to the same old abject misery about the state of things, but should you wish to recommend someone I could have a positive chat with or indeed anyone else miserable that find different questions to ask rather than just openly weep with them over a skype line, then please do get in touch and let me know your suggestions. You can do that @parpolbro on Twitter, the Partly Political Broadcast group on Facebook, the contact page on partlypoliticalbroadcast.co.uk or email me at partlypoliticalbroadcast@gmail.com. Or you could hijack the Countdown board and send out suggestions for guests in code via the letters and numbers selected for each round. But I’ll be too busy finding one swearword and then laughing about it to actually notice, so as always, probably just best to email.

END

And that’s all for this week’s Partly Political Broadcast podcast, and thanks once again for doing the listening and that, and obvs if you like any of the noises on this show, even if its just the weird intake breaths I do after I say a sentence too fast, then please do think about giving the show a lovely review on your pod aplasias, do chuck us some of your hard earnings to the ko-fi or patreon accounts and mostly spend your days travelling from town to town, banging on doors by the misty moon, delivering the word of pod. Sorry, I mean, please tell nice bods about this nice pods.

Many thanking times to Acast for shielding this mouth breathing hour into its sound sanctuary, to my brother The Last Skeptik for his musical happensounds, and to Kat Day for typing up the linear liner notes every single week.

This will be back next week when Nick Boles announces his new party, the Boles club and is suddenly inundated by requests to join from all the MPs over 70 years old.

BYEEEEEEEEEEEEE

This week’s show was sponsored by Steve Baker’s Bulldozing For Hire. Need something knocking down? Angry Steve will happily turn up and pathetically prod at it for several hours before getting all out of breath, asking for some water and then blaming everyone else for it still being up.

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