Further Reading

Linear liner notes

Conservatives hate people who report crime, and Jeremy Corbyn more than most things. Boris vs Jeremy is the stupidist, most depressing contest of our time and Tiernan (@tiernandouieb) chats to Professor Heidi Larson (@profheidilarson) from the Vaccine Confidence Project and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (@LSHTM). Plus a middle bit about various bits.

Links and sources of info from Heidi’s interview:

• • Professor Heidi Larson on Twitter – https://twitter.com/ProfHeidiLarson
• • Vaccine Confidence Project website – https://www.vaccineconfidence.org/
• • London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) on Twitter – https://twitter.com/LSHTM
• • LSHTM website – https://www.lshtm.ac.uk/
• • Vaccine Knowledge Project website – http://vk.ovg.ox.ac.uk/
• • NHS web pages on vaccination – https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/vaccinations/
• • Public Health England website – https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/public-health-england
• • World Health Organization (WHO) on Twitter – https://twitter.com/WHO
• • European Commission web pages on vaccination – https://ec.europa.eu/health/vaccination/overview_en

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

Episode 149

Hello and welcome to the Partly Political Broadcast, the political comedy podcast that inhales all of the news and breathes it out right into your face like a vape that smells of arse. This is episode 149, I’m Tiernan Douieb and this week I want to start with some important advice. If you hear, loud, potentially violent noises coming from next door and you’re thinking about calling the police as someone may be in danger. Don’t. Instead just remember that even if your neighbor is fat canary with toxic burns Boris Johnson and his girlfriend who sounds in distress, what you should do is play the national anthem very loudly on a tuba, as you wouldn’t want anyone to think you’re a traitor.

According to politicians and newspapers over the weekend, unless you’re a card-carrying Conservative member the last thing you should do is call the police to report what sounds like a crime, as actually it’s just an invasion of privacy. Spotted a mugging? How dare you interrupt free market capitalism at its core roots. Witnessed arson? Yet more leftie anti-fossil fuel burning bollocks, I bet you think they should destroy that home using wind energy do you smartie pants? Seen a stabbing take place? Well…hang on, were they black or can we blame it on Sadiq Khan because if so, I’m listening. Neighbours of Boris Johnson and his girlfriend Carrie Symonds called the police, and made a recording, after hearing screaming, glasses being smashed and lots of arguing and while Boris or his pals might think that just sounds like a standard Bullingdon Club night out, to most ordinary people they’d be concerned someone was in danger. Well someone other than Boris otherwise if it was just him screaming I know I’d have been less bothered, though I might have recorded it for personal entertainment. Many newspapers seem very bothered by the fact the neighbours recorded the sounds that were coming through the walls, probably because correct etiquette would’ve been to hack Boris or Symonds phones, listen to their voicemails and try to record through the microphone. Telegraph columnist and woman who looks like she’s perpetually stepping on a rake Allison Pearson accused the neighbours of being like the Stasi before demanding that we find out their political views and everything about them. Either she’s aware of the hypocrisy and all about the clickbait, or, judging by her recently having to ask the Telegraph to remove her own article about how terrible the Voice is as her daughter is now on it, I think Pearson is just the sort of narcissist who’d leap out of her car to tell other people how to parent while leaving her kids strapped in to their seats, on a hot day with the windows up.

The big question was why should this impinge on Boris’s Conservative leadership campaign when it’s an event in his awful, awful personal life? Well firstly because if he treats women in a way that causes them to scream like they’re being attacked and tell him to get out, chances are anyone who’s not a total dick won’t feel comfortable with him in charge. Secondly because there’s every chance that causing a lot of noise and shouty threats in the early hours of the morning, disturbing the neighbours but refusing to leave on someone else’s terms, is likely a good indication of how he’d handle Brexit. Yes, this is one of the country’s current leadership choices, and while it’s slightly refreshing that the UK is remaking an American horror film for once, it’s clear just how similar Johnson is to malignant haystack Donald Trump, not only in his mistreatment of women but also in his connections to far right Minion with necrotizing fasciitis Steve Bannon. Footage shows that Bannon talking about his relationship with Johnson and how he helped him write his first speech after resigning as Foreign Secretary, a job that he resigned from in protest of May’s Brexit deal that he then later voted for. Johnson had previously said there was no connection between him and Bannon and that it was just a lefty delusion. God these lefties eh? Getting all deluded about things that have actually happened and show that the country is heading towards being handed to a bunch of flesh beanbag fascists and calling the police because it sounds like a woman is being attacked. What arseholes and where will it end? I mean what next? I bet they might try to rescue an animal or donate to a charity or something. Makes me sick.

Will any of these revelations deter the Conservative membership aka 160,000 childcatchers from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang from voting for Boris as leader? Unlikely, especially as the row was the second incident of Conservatives jumping to say that attacking women is fine, after Foreign Office minister and demonic snapchat filter is my default face Mike Field was suspended after grabbing a female climate protestor by the neck at a Mansion House dinner. Field said he was reacting to a security threat, you know from a woman in an evening gown making a peaceful protest about how the planet is on fire. You see, we’ve been doing it all wrong looking out for potential terrorists in balaclavas or carrying backpacks and weapons or perhaps from men who storm leadership candidate debates to shout about fake politicians, like happened at barbed wire with lipstick on Esther McVey’s launch two weeks ago when no one stepped in. Or during Prime Minister and rejected Giacometti sculpture Theresa May’s speech at the Conservative conference in 2017 when a comedian ran up to the stage to hand her a p45 and no one did anything. No, no, it turns out its only really dangerous when it’s someone who’s there to ask that it’d be great if we did something about the potential end of humanity because nothing says beware like being concerned for children’s futures. I’m not sure why Mike Field hasn’t just saved us all by turning up to children in need and decking everyone in the face, and I bet he’s glad Mother Theresa’s already dead or he’d have had to leap up and kick her in the shins for the sake of safety. Field said what he did was instinctive, which is odd, as that means it’s his natural reaction to grab women by the throat and again, several Conservatives said it was the right thing to do as the protestor may have had a potential weapon. Isn’t everything a potential weapon if you try hard enough? Couldn’t a piece of cake be pushed into someone’s eyes? A sock some sort of chemical deterrent? Mike was sitting at a table with cutlery on, it’s a wonder he didn’t choke himself in-case he accidentally wielded a spoon with hidden menace. The protestor, from Greenpeace, is not pressing charges but Field has been suspended pending investigation by the Cabinet office which likely means he’ll be back in the Commons next time there’s an important vote. It’s very sad that the term ‘field experience’ now means having the instinctive skills to attack an unarmed woman.

While Mike Field was showing his true colours by forcefully ejecting protestors, his colleague and nervous burlap sack Chris Davies was being ejected from his seat. 20% of all registered voters in his constituency of Brecon and Radnorshire signed a recall petition after he was given a criminal conviction for expenses fraud. Davies forged two invoices for some photographs he had taken, rather than submit the single invoice for £700. Those are expensive pics but then I guess they would’ve needed a lot of photoshop work to stop him looking like a long dead chinchilla. Davies was fined £1500, which could’ve got him two sets of photos if he hadn’t been a total crim about it, and the Conservative party didn’t throw him out as its likely they thought he too was blameless and it was all the fault of the leftie British legal system and their horrific communist inability to let rich people scam money off the public whenever they like. Who are these Crown Court judges wanting to know why Davies, in an important public position, was forging documents pertaining to public funds? Are they the bloody Stasi or something? I think we should know all of their private expenses and political views and their DNA codes, children’s addresses, favourite Friday night takeaway and their honest thoughts on various films over the past decade. There will now be a by-election in Brecon and Radnorshire, though now set date is given. The Brexit Party will be putting a candidate forward as they say it’s clear the constituents want a trustworthy MP, because you know what’s more trustworthy than an expenses fiddler? That’s right, someone who won’t reveal where their funds come from in the first place. Why stop there? I hope Bernie Madoff runs just so the people of Brecon and Radnorshire can feel really safe. The Welsh Liberal Democrats have said this is a golden opportunity for them to win the seat, but what they haven’t counted on is the Conservatives special tactic of, wait for it, letting Chris Davies run in the by-election to replace himself. Yes. Really. No, he isn’t even wearing a false moustache and calling himself Dis Chravies.

What you have to remember is that the Conservatives have an inability to see anything as their fault, which shows how out of line they are with British Values. If they truly represented the British people they’d be apologizing every two minutes and being quite awkward about it, while insisting they were the dickheads. As it is, you should be able to spot one of the 160,000 Conservative members loose in the UK as they’ll be the ones that’ll drive straight into your car then say it was your fault, or push your child over in the street and blame them for not being more heavily weighted on their feet like a weeble. Leadership candidate Jeremy Hunt with his eyes like cut outs in a shit painting of a pie dish with a startled seagull standing behind it peering through, yeah well him, he backed Davies saying he’d only ever known him as a decent and honest man. Considering Hunt wasn’t even aware of what property he owned, I’m not sure we should take that as a recommendation. But this is where we are now, two leadership contestants, one who lies and has people calling the police round to his home in the middle of the night and one who supports criminal activity. They shouldn’t be up for becoming prime minister, they should be in a reality TV show that involves setting up a sports bar in Costa Del Sol and seeing who can make it go bankrupt the quickest.

After a week of ballots and one excruciating BBC Debate where all the candidates sat on stools like they were about to do the commentary for some sort of elitist sport when people hit antiques at orphans and where the only real winner was a 15 year old girl called Erin who told them that none of them impressed her, we are left with the final two shit choices, if it’s actually a choice when it’s like choosing between gargling shit from a bucket or having it served in an old shoe. Ziploced offal Dominic Raab was first to leave which felt appropriate. Then was Red Skull with anemia Rory Stewart which put a stop to his shit similies about Brexit being like too many bin bags in a bin or parliament having a door and him needing to find the key. Luckily, he was like someone no one liked and had to leave. Then Egg Art Sajid Javid which was great for him to finally see what it’s like being booted out without your consent. Finally, the line was drawn at ‘oh god what’s that in the back of fridge and how long has it been there’ Michael Gove, whereby he probably tried to snort it. Hunt’s campaign has so far involved taking a picture of himself in an empty airport lounge saying that he’s on his way to Scotland where they want a third runway at Heathrow. Yes, he’s tried to sell the need for an unpopular, polluting idea by saying people who live nowhere near it want it, which there’s no evidence to say they do, in a picture showing a total lack of demand. Not only that but he’s flying from London to Scotland which is terrible for the planet, though to be fair, that could be because he’s aware that until something changes bone helmet Chris Grayling is still in charge of trains. At a conference in Birmingham Hunt said that he had been at a business employing 350 people, with a 4% margin and so a 10% tariff would wipe them out, but if he had to do it, he would. Brilliant. So much like Trump’s racist comments about Sadiq Khan, Hunt agrees with the sentiment of Boris’s ‘fuck business’ statement from last year, just with different words.

Boris’s campaign has of course included the fracas at his own home, which he has refused to talk about saying that he doesn’t think people want to hear about that, but for some reason did seem to think we all wanted to hear him talk about negotiating trade deals with the EU in the implementation period after we leave without the withdrawal agreement, something that isn’t possible as the implementation period is part of the withdrawal agreement. But hey, that’s fine as it’s not as if it’s anything new to have someone in charge who hasn’t got a clue how to negotiate Brexit. The other area Boris is being compared to the former Tory Leader Theresa May is on his reluctance to debate Jeremy Hunt on a Sky debate which is really pathetic as I’m pretty sure a bag of discarded chips could debate Jeremy Hunt and win. Hunt wouldn’t debate with a junior doctor once during the junior doctors’ strike when he was being the worst Health Secretary of all time, so why is Boris so scared? Is it because having both of them next to each other in a room would show us that all of this is completely pointless as either one will willingly, despite also probably unwittingly, drive the UK so far into the ground we’ll end up under Australian jurisdiction?

Leader of the SNP Westminster group and every drawing in a text book about a medieval baker Ian Blackford called Boris a racist during Prime Minister’s Question time, and when asked to withdraw his allegation by the speaker, he just listed all the racist things Boris has said, and the speaker didn’t bother asking him again. So while everything is more rock bottom than The Thing’s bum, its at least nice to know that sometimes PMQs does contain actual facts. Again, none of this will change the minds of those who get to vote on this anyway as a YouGov poll of Tory members showed most would choose Brexit over keeping their party alive, saving the UK economy, or Scotland or Northern Ireland staying in the UK. The only option where they’d choose to ditch Brexit would be if it led to Labour leader and rejected Coen Brothers film extra Jeremy Corbyn becoming PM. Which doesn’t make sense as if Brexit happened and caused the economy to crash, the Conservatives to die out, and Scotland to leave, chances are high that as a dozen or so Conservatives would back a no confidence vote, that Corbyn would be the next PM anyway. As long as they get to ruin it and not someone from Labour, then it’s all ok. It’s completely pointless ideological petty destruction. If we can’t win then no one must win. They’d rather own a child biting dog than make sure their own children are safe but if Corbyn wanted to pat the dog, they’d probably have to shoot it in the face. 67% of those surveyed also believe that parts of Britain operate under sharia law and 45% think there are parts of Britain that non-Muslims can’t enter. I think the only way out of this terrible future would be to persuade them that actually they’re right, and its everywhere outside of their front door, meaning they can never leave their homes and the rest of us will have a decent life. Of course, no one would check in on them either as that’d just be invading their privacy.

In other news, still Prime Minister Theresa May released a video on the newly created Windrush Day, where she gave thanks to those pioneering men and woman, as she put it, a bit like General Custer doing a video for Native American Day. May announced a Windrush memorial that will be built in Waterloo Station, something that the Windrush Foundation have said is rubbish as they wanted one in Brixton and Waterloo had nothing to do with Windrush. Typical May, not bothering to find out where something belongs and instead just deciding for it, without anyone involved getting a say.

Former Deputy PM, Facebook’s vice president of global affairs and paid up cannon fodder Nick Clegg has announced that there is no evidence that Russia influenced the Brexit result via Facebook. Chances are though, that he agreed to say that in exchange for Facebook making some pointless change like allowing him to have 5 more friends than anyone else, except they’ll change it to be him having 5 less friends or no friends at all and then he’ll have sold himself out and have to back an option he doesn’t want before resigning and getting employed by LinkedIn.

Paul Crowther, the man and hero who threw milkshake at giant walking scallop and leader of the Brexit Party Nigel Farage has been ordered to pay for Farage’s dry cleaning bill by the court, compensation for the criminal damage done to his lapel microphone, distress and inconvenience, all of which adds to a fine of £520. A fundraiser was set up within minutes of the charge and its already on just under £2500, so hopefully what he’s learned from all this is that he could soak Farage at least three more times & have some spare to maybe lob a Yakult at the end.

And lastly…. This is weird but…

LIAM FOX JINGLE

Disgraced MP Liam The Disgrace Fox was on the Andrew Marr show on BBC1 on Sunday and said that Boris Johnson’s claims that World Trade Rules could be used after Brexit to avoid tarrifs, isn’t true. What? I know, he said something actually factually correct and dispelled someone else’s bullshit. WHAT HAS HAPPENED? HOW HAS THE MAN WHO SAID BREXIT WOULD BE THE EASIEST DEAL IN HISTORY AND THAT HE’D HAVE TRADE DEALS COMING OUT OF HIS BUMHOLE BY MIDNIGHT OF OUR LEAVING DATE NOW SUDDENLY THE MOST SENSIBLE MAN IN POLITICS? What the fuck is this? What next? Is Nadine Dorries going to suddenly present a list of why there’s no credible evidence that Iran attacked those tankers? No of course not. That won’t happen but seriously, where are we if Liam Fox is the voice of the truth? Has he been pretending all along? Was he visited by the three ghosts of Brexit past, present and future? Is this the real Liam Fox who’s been imprisoned behind an iron mask for years, unable to escape the wrath of his evil twin Wiam Fox? Or is it just that now he’s backing Hunt, yes a Fox backing a Hunt, heh, that he hates Boris even more than he hates the truth? Where will this go? As Boris gets closer to number 10 will we find Fox renouncing his entire past, as Adam Werrity holds him on his shoulders, the two of them singing a song about exactly what is plausible in a withdrawal agreement? We can’t even rely on our disgraced lying idiots anymore. Things are so screwed.

ADMIN

Greetings ParPolBrods, it is a muggy horrible day here today to the extent that I can’t even wear my headphones to record this or I’m concerned my ears will melt and then next time I need my sunglasses I’ll have to attach them to my face with blu-tack which will also probably melt and then people will think I’m wearing Braveheart style warpaint and trying to eat my sunglasses and no one will come near me. Actually, this all sounds brilliant. I’ll just pop my headphones on. How’s you? It’s been a grim old week for news hasn’t it, with Conservative MPs and right-wing commentators basically lining up to criticize people who report crime, attack women and back fraudsters. I had a weird realization the other day when it occurred to me that while I want everything to be better in general, even if the Tories could at least pretend to not be total bastards, it’d be better. You know, at least try to have some sort of moral compass instead, like this past week has shown, no hesitation to embrace pack mentality and defend their own prize morons regardless of what they do. I’m starting to believe that Boris Johnson could spend the rest of his campaign flicking turds at babies while telling puppies to go fuck themselves and his core fanbase would just blame everyone else for being upset by his creative manner. I just want to know, off the record or whatever, if they’re all walking off camera or radio mic, exhaling and thinking oh god why is Johnson such a cock. Or is a genuine emperor’s new clothes and the moment is too exciting and bewildering that they are running along with it, in the hope that no one will do a documentary about it in 20 years where they’ll end up admitting to offering oral sex to a customs official in order to get Brexit through and that it was their idea to get Ja Rule on board. It’s all so baffling and frighteningly America like. I was watching the new series of Handmaid’s Tale last night and all the while I just kept thinking that if Gilead started happening here, our currently governing party would probably just say that it was all necessary as those women could’ve had potential weapons and that no one would have made a fuss if lefties hadn’t interfered.

Exhausting, all of it, which is why, there is no podcast next week, as I’m on a very long overdue week’s holiday. Hooray! Basically we’ve decided that we’re so exhausted that there’d be nothing more relaxing than trying to take our little one on a plane, which she’ll probably hate, and then to somewhere else in the world where we can frantically try to not let her smash her face into dangerous things. But hey, a change of somewhere to be exhausted is as good as rest right? Probably not. But this will be back on the 9^th July meaning that I’ll still have to watch the news while I’m away which will completely ruin being away. But it’s not like anything’s happening is it? Chances are it’ll just be yet more stories about how both potential leaders are two of the worst humans that have ever existed and unless some sort of deity or extraterrestrial beams down to say ‘hey we didn’t create you to be this shit’ then I really don’t see that I’ll be missing out on much. Then there’ll be three more podcasts before a long summer break till September.

What it does mean though, is that your ears get a week off this noise so why not use your time wisely, to, er, listen to any older episodes you’ve missed? Listen to this one on repeat? Both of the above? Sadly, I have no other ideas. There’s probably not anything else you can do. Oh wait, you could also donate to the ko-fi.com/parpolbro or patreon.com/parpolbro to buy me a cold beverage that I can pretend to enjoy while away but instead will leave on the side and forget while I’m trying to stop my daughter from getting her face trapped in a sun lounger or something. Both those links will be in the pod blurb. And of-course please also review the show in all the reviewy show places. Thanks to whichever of you champs hit the 5 stars on iTunes this past week. More of that pleasey please.

No other admin this week apart from my Camden Fringe shows at the Camden Comedy Club on August 4^th at 8pm and 5^th at 6.30pm which so far, have only sold 2 tickets and I’m pretty sure that’s to my parents. So please come as I don’t wish to re-enact that classic Maria Bamford special. Please, please come. Ticket link is in the pod blurb. I may do something with the show after August and hopefully taking it to places other than London, but it depends on how traumatized I am by doing an entire hour to just my mum and dad. Please come along. Please.

On this week’s show I have a chat with Heidi Larsson at the Vaccine Confidence Project as there is an increase in people preferring measles to not measles which is not right and therefore not preferable to right. Plus a mini-catch up on the handful of things that aren’t about the political Bungle or haunted cheese string battling it out. So let’s start with this:

INTERVIEW WITH HEIDI

The fact that I don’t currently have small pox means I’m a big fan of The Vaccines. Not the English indie rock band as I am too old to be a fan of them and I couldn’t name you even one of their songs. Go on ask me. Can you name one of the Vaccines songs Tiernan? No, no idea. See? Told you. I was of course talking about medical vaccines, which have over their time wiped out or nearly wiped out smallpox the mini-version of pox, polio which I don’t think is even in the Olympics anymore, Tetanus which you used to get if you had a Gameboy, rabies the collective term for royal babies, yellow fever which went out of fashion last autumn, measles aka human dot to dot, mumps aka everyone looks like Matt Hancock disease, whooping cough when even your illness can’t resist the party, rinderpest which is when you’re harassed by an ITV court show judge, and Hib which has really affected the Scottish football league. Of course, that isn’t what any of those mean, they were all really horrible diseases but thanks to medical immunization wonders, a lot more people get to survive those things or avoid them altogether than they used to. While the majority of people around the world trust vaccines and don’t particularly want rabies, there is growing mistrust in them of 7-8% of people globally according to a survey by Wellcome. But in places like Western Europe, 22% of people don’t think they’re safe, and that’s leading to measles making a comeback less appreciated than the All Saints one last year. Anti-vaxxers are a big old movement, when they aren’t too ill to move places, and in recent weeks even Jessica Biel who’s most well-known for sort of vaguely existing came out as being an anti-vaxxer which I think may have helped others gain trust in them again. Measles outbreaks were up 300% last year compared to the year before, with 259 cases in England in 2017, and a whopping 966 in 2018 meaning children who hadn’t had their vaccines were easily spotted. Arf. The Department of Health has mentioned the possibility of banning unvaccinated children from school to avoid outbreaks and even talks of vaccines becoming compulsory like in France, but what would be better than either of those things is just encouraging people to trust in extensive research and science and prefer some not measles to measles.

So, this week I spoke to Professor Heidi Larson from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, which my stupid brain always makes me assume its pineapple flavoured. Heidi is the founding director of the Vaccine Confidence Project whose purpose is to monitor public confidence in immunization programs and find out how to encourage people to trust in them. They do extensive research in areas of high and low vaccine coverage and look at just what the reasons are for people believing being vaccinated is worse for you than being covered head to toe in red spots and potential brain inflammation, which can happen, I’ve just read about it and it sounds horrible. So I spoke to Heidi all about how bad the current levels of mistrust are and what they mean, why people don’t believe in medicine anymore and as you’ll hear towards the end a bit about parental quibbles at vaccinating your little one. Which weren’t really quibbles at all, and as you’ll hear, ice cream really helped. Me and my daughter that is. Anyway, hope you enjoy. Here is Heidi:

INTERVIEW WITH HEIDI PART 1

We’ll be back with Heidi in a minute but first….

You might assume that what with all the endless noise of the Conservative leadership race going on, the relentless scrabbling sound of frantic damage limitation, that not much else is happening in the political sphere. Well, assume makes an ass of you and me, as really awful people say, but who doesn’t like ass? There’s not loads but there are a few bits and bobs that are worth a mention and so that’s what this middle bit is for this week, a bit for some bits if you like. There may also be some bobs.

In England and Wales, there is currently a 195 year-old law that makes it illegal to be a rough sleeper. I mean, that’s incredible cruelty for an impossible situation right? You’ve ended up on hard times, you can’t afford to have a roof over your head, well now you’re a criminal by default and here’s a fine of £1000 that you’ll never pay back. That’s harder to win than that time as children me and my friends played the game where the floor is all lava in a room with absolutely no climbable furniture on it. What are you meant to do except submit to the lava because the rules are all against you? The law was originally created to clear the streets of soldiers returning from the Napoleonic wars, which was nice right? I mean it’s a regular xenophobic dig that France never win any wars but is it really any better winning them then making all your soldiers criminals? Obviously, Napoleon isn’t as much of a problem anymore but rising homelessness is, increasing by 70% in the last 5 years. There were 1320 prosecutions under the act just last year, none of which helped anyone to find accommodation. It’s like treating a wound by attempting to kick it better. Scotland repealed the act in 1982 instead creating legislature to deal with antisocial and criminal behavior. Police, MPs and the charity Crisis are all asking for the law to be scrapped, and the housing and homeless minister has said that a review will be carried out in due course. Let’s hope it doesn’t take another 200 years.

In parliament this week a bill is being discussed to allow for no fault divorces to happen if people just don’t like each other but don’t fully hate each other. If you get a divorce right now, while listening to this show, then you basically have to sue each other for who gets what, who has to deal with the children and have their weekend ruined when, and if you have irreconcilable differences then one of you has to say the other has unreasonable behaviours and list them and then you don’t get to point out that maybe, just maybe your snoring is like nature’s white noise and that you never take the bins out because you’re worried they’ll get cold and won’t someone care for the bins. Either that or you blame adultery which means you have to include someone else in it all and basically, we can all sympathise with what Boris Johnson is going through. Ha! I joke. But the introduction of a no fault divorce would mean that the whole thing is less finger pointing and blaming and you can just get a divorce because as the term would state, there has been an ‘irretrievable breakdown’, something the government know all about with Brexit. It’s a much nicer way to do it, it should potentially be much easier on the children too, and all in all feels like an actually progressive step. If anything, if this passes in the commons which it most likely will, maybe it should be used on Brexit and perhaps the EU could just let us claim an irretrievable breakdown. At least would stop any suspicions that we’ve been secretly bedding with Russia.

Thanks to brilliant campaigners at Campaign Against Arms Trade (who I spoke to way back on episode 30), the Court of Appeal has ruled that it is now unlawful for the UK to license military equipment to Saudi Arabia while they are engaged in the war in Yemen. If you didn’t know, and again, head back to Episode 108 with Fred Carver at the UNA-UK, Saudi Arabia has been at the helm of a humanitarian catastrophe in Yemen, with over 100,000 people dead since 2015, 250,000 displaced and 24 million people in need of aid, 10 million of which who are relying solely on food aid just to survive. The UK government, rather oddly, has been both sending aid to the crisis, while also supplying Saudi Arabia with £4.7bn of weapons since 2015 that they have been using to oppress the Yemeni people. It’s a bit like the whole Vagrancy Act thing where you can’t help but feel that one effort really doesn’t help the other. It feels like buying someone a toothbrush while punching all their teeth out. Thanks to CAAT judges have said that there is a clear risk that arms sold by the UK to Saudi may be used for serious violation of international humanitarian law. While the licences would not be scrapped straight away they’d all be reviewed and even disgraced MP Liam The Disgrace Fox has said they won’t grant any new ones till the judgement has been considered. YES, LIAM FOX SAID THAT, WHAT THE FUCK IS HAPPENING? I WAS TOTALLY EXPECTING HIM TO SAY THAT IF THE UK DON’T SELL SAUDI ARMS THEN SOMEONE ELSE WILL, LIKE THEY ALWAYS DO AS THOUGH ITS IMPORTANT THAT PEOPLE IN YEMEN ONLY DIE BY THE HIGHEST QUALITY BRITISH BULLETS. However, Theresa May did say with all her usual warmth and humanity that the government was disappointed and that they will appeal because as far as she’s concerned, they aren’t white so if they die over there she won’t have to worry about deporting them from here. Amnesty International have said the judgement is a major step towards preventing further bloodshed so this is a good thing and hopefully it won’t be overturned anytime soon just because our nearly gone Prime Minister thinks it should.

And now back to Heidi….

INTERVIEW WITH HEIDI PART 2

Thanks so much to Heidi for that. You can find her on Twitter @ProfHeidiLarson, and the Vaccine Confidence Project is at vaccineconfidence.org which is full of research and archives should you wish to look up anything to do with various vaccine tests or indeed the causes of loss of confidence in them. Heidi is a professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical medicine who are also on Twitter @LSHTM and their website is lshtm.ac.uk and both are full of fascinating research and studies into, well, health and hygiene. Do check them all out. Links to everything, as always, are in the podblurb and on the website at partlypoliticalbroadcast.co.uk

Thanks to previous pod guest Michael Marshall for recommending I drop Heidi a line. There are only three more podcasts left before the summer break, but I’m still in need of two guests and then I’ll obviously need more people to chat to when this show returns in the Autumn. So send me your ideas, for guests or anything I can patent and earn money from completely failing to credit you and as you run a rival company with the same product we will spend the rest of our lives pointlessly competing until one of us is on our death bed and we realise we could’ve joined forces and made things better all along but now its too late and we’ll mostly be remembered as being arseholes. Actually, just send me guest ideas. And you can do that @parpolbro on Twitter, the Partly Political Broadcast group on Facebook, the contact page at partlypoliticalbroadcast.co.uk or via email at partlypoliticalbroadcast@gmail.com. And after last week I suggested that you move in next door to me and shout suggestions through the walls like you’re having an argument, and that then ended up being fairly prescient, let me see if I can sway reality yet again. Why not tell me who to interview by running into a wall repeatedly and trying to imprint their name into the bricks with your face? Right, fingers crossed that works. Obviously if you’re not Boris Johnson, its far, far easier just to email.

END

And that’s all for this week’s Partly Political Broadcast podcast. Cheers to your ears for the listening hustle and don’t forget, there is no podcast next week, so why not use the hour you’d usually waste on this to do something productive like listen to an old episode you’ve not heard before, review the show on your podcast apps, donate some money to me at ko-fi.com/parpolbro or Patreon.com/parpolbro to help me out, or maybe just stare into the middle distance contemplating the meaning of existence, the futility of so many actions, just how great ice cream is and praying you don’t miss your bus stop because you’ve fallen asleep.

Thanks loads to Acast, to my brother The Last Skeptik for the music, and do go get his single ‘You Make Me Wanna (Kill)’ out everywhere now, and to Kat Day for all the linear liner note typing.

This won’t be back next week, so you’ll just have to deal with it. However, it will be back in two weeks when Boris is found feasting on several children’s bones but gets away with it because stupid leftie police discovered him for political reasons and Remainer parents only pretend to care about their kids because they hate democracy. Boris’s popularity with the membership increases by 5%.

BYEEEEEEEEEEE

This week’s show was brought to you by Allison Pearson’s Difficult Neighbours and How To Solve Them, a new book from the author and human embodiment of frenzied paranoia, in which she’ll tell you all the ways you can deal with the kind of scum next door types who think they can go around calling the police like nosey so and so’s just because they’ve heard you bludgeon your husband to death with a mace. Offering to feed your cat while you’re on holiday? Read Pearson’s guide and you’ll be able to find out if they were ever part of ISIS and you’ll have them in a secret court before they can stop your little kitty from starving while you drink until your teeth bleed in the sort of resort where no one makes eye contact with you. Insisting you join the neighbourhood watch as there’s been some recent car theft? This guide will show you how to claim they are KGB, Mossad or secret agents of your choice and go round smashing all their video doorbells with a sharpened stick you use to impale squirrels on. Allison Pearson’s Difficult Neighbours and How To Solve Them, available now because good neighbours become dead behind the eyes, never question the regime good friends.

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