Further Reading

Linear liner notes

Week 4 of GE2019 brought a tragic terror attack, bleak racism battles, too many debates, and the Prime Minister getting his dad to do things because he was too busy eating scones. Plus a look at what’s gone wrong in the rehabilitation system and a chat with Guy Taylor (@guidotallman) from Global Justice Now (@globaljusticeuk) on those 451 pages of UK / US trade documents.

Links and sources of info from Guy’s interview:

• • Guy Taylor on Twitter – https://twitter.com/GuidoTallman
• • Global Justice UK on Twitter – https://twitter.com/globaljusticeuk
• • Global Justice UK website – https://www.globaljustice.org.uk/
• • War on Want on Twitter – https://twitter.com/WarOnWant
• • We Own It on Twitter – https://twitter.com/We_OwnIt
• • Keep Our NHS Public on Twitter – https://twitter.com/keepnhspublic
• • Unite the Union on Twitter – https://twitter.com/unitetheunion
• • UNISON on Twitter – https://twitter.com/unitetheunion
• • GMB Union on Twitter – https://twitter.com/gmb_union
• • National Educational Union on Twitter – https://twitter.com/NEUnion
• • Fairtrade Foundation on Twitter – https://twitter.com/FairtradeUK
• • Fairtrade International on Twitter – https://twitter.com/fairtrade
• • List of environmental NGOs (UN Environment website) – https://www.unenvironment.org/civil-society-engagement/accreditation/list-accredited-organizations
• • Information on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transatlantic_Trade_and_Investment_Partnership
• • Greenpeace on Twitter – https://twitter.com/Greenpeace
• • Greenpeace articles on trade and environmental impact – https://www.greenpeace.org/eu-unit/tag/trade/

Election-related links:

• • Full Fact website – https://fullfact.org/
• • Full Fact on Twitter – https://twitter.com/fullfact
• • Who Targets Me website – https://whotargets.me/en/
• • Who Targets Me on Twitter – https://twitter.com/WhoTargetsMe
• • Simple Politics on Twitter – https://twitter.com/easypoliticsUK
• • Simple Politics on Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/simplepoliticsuk/

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
• • Kat on Twitter – https://twitter.com/chronicleflask
• • Buy Kat a coffee (go on, spread the love) – https://ko-fi.com/katday

Transcript

Episode 167

NEXT UP PLUG

Wotcha. This week’s podcast is once again sponsored by the brilliant NextUpComedy.com. A comedy streaming platform with so, so many brilliant comedians and their hour specials on, and then there’s also me as well ruining it with my last three shows. It’s only £4.99 a month but you get the first month free if you sign up at nextupcomedy.com/tiernanisgreat. No I didn’t choose the URL. It chose me. Ahem. Anyway got on board to laugh your way through the tears of the election results and why Netflix and Chill when you can, er, NextUp and Gigg-le? Er….yeah.

INTRO

BRIAN RECORDING

Hello and welcome to the Partly Political Broadcast, the comedy politics podcast. This is episode 167 and I’m Brian, Tiernan’s dad as he said he’s too busy to appear on this week’s show so he said he wanted to be prime ministerial and send me instead. I have no idea what he’s doing instead but when I texted him Tiernan said he was it all the other podcasts fault as they didn’t want him there and then he spelled Pinocchio wrong 5 times in a row which I didn’t understand at all.

*record scratch noise*

ME AGAIN

Thanks Dad but I’ll take over from here as this bit’s easier. After a horrific terrorist attack in London, Prime Minister and the Great Twatsby Boris Johnson has said a vote for him will keep Britain safe. Oh yeah, how will you do that? Will you get your mum to tell on them while you insist on only doing the easier morning Cobra meetings without any of the hard questions?

It’s amazing how much you can learn about someone in a week of election campaigning. In just 7 days for example, we’ve learned that the Prime Minister has multiple levels of daddy issues, that the leader of the opposition and bearded twiglet Jeremy Corbyn doesn’t easily say sorry which means he can’t really represent British people, and that preserving marine life and correct use of safety products comes second in priorities to fighting off terrorism with a narwhal tusk and a fire extinguisher. Yes very sadly it’s another election that has been marred by a violent incident in London Bridge, where two young people were tragically killed and the attacker was stopped by a Polish Chef with a whale tooth, a man using foam as a weapon and a convicted murderer on day release, among others, in the sort of story that can only have caused temporary embolisms for the staff at most right wing papers as all their hatred collides against itself in the kind of tale you’d usually expect to be directed by James Gunn. Why anyone would think it’s worth wreaking terror on a country that’s currently very successfully destroying itself is beyond me, but it has raised a lot of questions on account of the attacker being a convicted terrorist who was in the middle of a rehabilitation program. One of these questions is when is it ok to politicize a horrific event that is, in its nature, inherently political? Is it when the governing party blames it entirely on the previous government of over 9 years ago and calls for tougher sentencing in a way that means actually they won’t change anything as we already have that and the biggest problem was that their party has made so many cuts and made rehabilitation so shit that they’ve had to actually renationalize it, which is up there with things the Conservatives hate doing most, after shaking hands with working class people and in Johnson’s case, actually seeing his kids. Is it when one of the victims is named as Jack Merritt, a very inspirational man who was trying to improve the lives of prisoners, and his father said that he would not wish his death to be used as the pretext for more draconian sentences or for detaining people unnecessarily and then several newspapers and the Conservatives did exactly that because as always they care more about respecting the wishes of the nearly dead but still able to vote far more? Or is it when all the parties said they’d halt campaigning out of respect for the victims but still did all the telly shows and debates where they all talked about it lots and got all their facts about the state of the prison system wrong and Michael Gove did an event in Woking? Though I suppose at least that way everyone knew he’d be at that event in Woking instead of concerning an already shaken nation by the possibility of him turning up somewhere else near them looking like if a severed appendix was held out of a car window on the motorway, so maybe it’s for the best. Another question is, what use is trident or anti-terror squads, when perhaps we should be investing in farming narwhals for murderers to ride around on with buckets of sand?

The week began with the Chief Rabbi and what if Dave Myers from the Hairy Bikers got serious Ephraim Mirvis, saying that Jeremy Corbyn had allowed a poison sanctioned from the top to take root in Labour. I assume he meant sanctioned as in it was allowed, not as in it was a penalized by the leader, but maybe it was the latter and we’ve just been reading it in very much the wrong tone of voice all along. Mirvis who is the spiritual leader of 62 orthodox synagogues, said the soul of the nation is at stake, though I’d say that’s debatable as some people prefer other pie fillings, and that the Labour party’s leadership of anti-Semitism was incompatible with British values. A very serious comment for him to make and one that sadly perhaps underestimates how racist British values generally are. Of course some British Jewish people have stood up for Labour, while the Muslim Council of Britain made a statement about the rife Islamaphobia in the Conservative Party and then the Hindu Council said actually Labour were also anti-Hindu because they always speak against Islamaphobia but they criticized populist Santa Narandra Modhi and the Buddhists didn’t release any statement presumably because even they are having to work really hard to stay calm right now. During an interview on Tuesday evening with Fungus The Bogeyman wears a toupe Andrew Neil, Jeremy Corbyn said several times that anti-Semitism was unacceptable and should not be happening but wouldn’t actually say sorry to the British Jewish community. If sorry seems to be the hardest word then why has he apologized for Labour’s approach to dealing with anti-Semitism at least four times but then couldn’t do it live on TV during an important election campaign? Why has he campaigned to protect Jewish cemeteries, defended Political Milhouse Ed Milliband’s dad from anti-Semitic attacks and back in 2015 challenged then Prime Minister and that one sock in the back of the machine that you missed David Cameron to do more to tackle it and yet, can’t just say sorry? Or at least soz, or my bad, or if Corbyn doesn’t mean it, cross his fingers behind his back? Or were all his previous efforts just to make people think he did care and then it really smarts when he lands the no sorry blow? Or has he just realized that sorry is political dynamite in today’s vicious world where apologizing will mean everyone says you’re weak, have caved in, and admitted your faults, whereas not apologizing means everyone thinks you’re racist, not very good at interviews, weak, have caved in and won’t admit your faults.

Luckily for Labour, just as this story dominated the news and everyone on Twitter told everyone else they were wrong, the Conservatives leapt on it with Johnson insisting that any Conservative members who express Islamaphobia will be out first bounce but forgetting that this can’t be true on account of him still being there and in charge. Aside from the infamous letterbox comments, Johnson also said back in 2005 that its natural to be scared of Islam, which I don’t think it is as babies aren’t born and then immediately start screaming about the consequences of religion. Though actually, they do often start screaming and we aren’t entirely sure what it’s about but look I’m fairly certain it isn’t misconceptions about the differences between halal and the way everyone else slaughters animals but with a different prayer. In the midst of this Michael Gove responded to Stormzy backing Labour, by saying he’s a far, far better rapper than political analyst which is quite something from a man that’s shit at everything except looking like a sea urchin in glasses. Which is not dissimilar to what Shadow Secretary of Education and Catherine Tate character Angela Rayner tweeted at him, to which Gove replied with a Stormzy lyric, but when tweeted by him just appeared to be a terrible judgement in cultural misappropriation of the kind that only white men of a certain age do when reggae comes on the radio or they haven’t realized everyone knows Jim Davidson is racist, and if he’d have just listened to the rest of the track he might have learned instead to shut up. Then Chancellor and emoji model Sajid Javid refused to say seven times whether he would use the term bank robber or letterboxes to describe women in burqas like Johnson did last year, which is impressive as I’d have given up asking him after the first time because you should know that as chancellor for the Conservatives and a former banker he’s all about the diminishing returns. This prompted journalists to dig up a whole load of Johnson’s old articles from when he was a journalist in occupation as well as spirit, and in them he was racist, classist and sexist making for a full whammy of shitholery. Did the chief rabbi think Labour’s anti-Semitism made them incompatible with British values because actually, as the polls still show, what the Brits really want across the board is a wider range of outdated and dangerous views?

On Wednesday, Labour unveiled 451 pages of documentation that they said showed the NHS hadn’t been taken of the table for trade deals with the US, Corbyn holding up several pages of blacked out redacted line after redacted line like Change UK had sent him their life story. But what they actually showed was several meetings between US trade officials and UK civil servants and for some reason the useless husk that is Disgraced MP Liam The Disgrace Fox who had probably just popped along so he could bring his pal Adam and have a week away. A US run National Health Service would be awful, not least because it’d be called a National Health Rest Stop, but also we’d all just be given opiods and Xanax for everything which would mean we were either ignorantly happy or confused and dopey all the time and…oh wait. Probably not that different then. No it would be terrible, and according to these documents medicine costs would rise which means I need to stockpile insulin asap. Not just because of a no deal or not being able to afford it myself, but when everything goes tits up under a Tory majority because the public are terrible, then I wanna get some benjamins dealing Novorapid on the corner. The Conservatives defended the report by saying the NHS is not on the table, which might mean its under it, in a brown envelope, and that it’s only mentioned four times, as if proving them not even bringing it up that much shows they care. I’m sure Johnson thinks he’s a great dad because he only remembers his kids names a few times a year, when telling his aides which numbers to block on his phone. But rather than push Johnson on these NHS plans, instead the big coverage was on how he filled his scone whilst in Cornwall because apparently that’s what matters despite very few people outside of the South West giving the remotest of fucks. Is it going to be jam first, or cream first or is he just going to stick his nob in it and screw it like everything else he does? Or maybe he’ll do one one way and the other the other and bring out whichever way wins? Or maybe he’ll just say that he always wanted to be king of the scones when he was at school while everyone conveniently forgets that article he wrote comparing cream teas to Pol Pot.

The media coverage of Johnson has been under scrutiny, particularly from the BBC as not only did they promote the Prime Minister’s everyman campaigning if everyman was a gluttonous fuckwit who assumes condiment assembly is more important than race relations and public healthcare, but after Corbyn’s shitshow with Andrew Neil, it turned out that Johnson hadn’t actually agreed to an interview with the Troll Hunter despite the Labour leader being told that he had. This breaches all those purdah rules if Johnson isn’t also going to get sat down and repeatedly asked how often he needs his trousers doused for flames. Johnson also didn’t want to turn up to Channel 4’s debate on climate change meaning that not only were they helping the others avoid unnecessary toxic emissions but also both Johnson and Brexit Party leader and felch accident Nigel Farage were replaced with melting ice sculptures. At first it would’ve been easy for viewers to realise the difference as instead of the morons, there were two cool and composed figures that didn’t say anything awful but calmly drip fed the audience watered down ideas. But by the end it was much the same as there’d just be two massive wet melts. This was arguably the most important debate as, you know, the world is on fire, and the Conservatives aren’t doing or pledging enough to tackle it, so it will come as no surprise that instead of Johnson, his dad and exactly the sort of person who’d make a joke about how he identifies as a car or something Stanley Johnson and old walking discharge Michael Gove again turned up unannounced with a film crew to demand they do it even though it was a leaders debate. Johnson senior, in so many ways, said that Gove could do a leader’s debate as he was a leader, which he isn’t and they wanted the leader. Though maybe people let him lead because if he’s behind them, he’ll stab them in the back? Channel 4 were derided for not letting a Conservative do it even though Johnson had turned it down, it was a leader’s debate and Gove and BoJo Dad hadn’t told them they were coming, so it was clearly all a charade. Instead there were thinly veiled threats about reviewing Channel 4’s licence and it was all the other leaders’ faults as they didn’t want Johnson there. Sure, no one wants Johnson anywhere and a large hunk of ice wetting itself in studio lights is better than a large chunk of offal shitting itself in studio lights but it really doesn’t ring true. But we can learn from this. Maybe any other debates Johnson does, none of the other leaders show up and instead its all just their relatives because nothing will have more impact than someone’s aunt telling him he’s a lying shitrag. Either that or all channels should just interview various pretend Borises, ranging from actors in wigs to collapsed sandbags in wigs and when the Prime Minister complains they can just say they didn’t know they wanted the Boris Johnson so they got a Boris Johnson.

Stanley managed to cause his own controversy by responding to a viewer calling his son Pinocchio that the British public couldn’t spell that word, which not only shows his contempt for people but also means he’s so out of touch he’s unaware of the popularity of a film that’s been out since 1940. Then again, he probably only ever read his children a version of the story where Pinocchio starts out as a real boy, but then gets sent to boarding school where he has all humanity beaten out of him.

According to Stanley, his son was too busy but he didn’t know doing what, and the same excuse was played for an Andrew Neil interview. However, he wasn’t too busy to do the Andrew Marr show on Sunday, hosted by Andrew Marr a man always looks like he was composed with a bit shaved off of another larger person. Basically Johnson was busy for Neill but not for Marr in the same way I definitely don’t have any time to do a skydive but I’m available any day of the week for one of those all you can eat breakfast buffets. So on Sunday Johnson appeared in front of Marr and proceeded to bumble and bluster over everything, mainly trying to insist that he wasn’t responsible for the last 9 years of Conservative government as he’d only been in office for 128 days. I mean, if you feel that uncomfortable about what the Tories did pal, maybe you should vote Labour? Instead though he blamed everything on the last Labour government from a decade ago, while bemoaning that people keep bringing up bits and pieces he did in the past, with zero awareness of the contradiction. At one point he said that he loved libraries, probably because it amazes him to be around so many streams of words that actually have a spine, and then he blamed councils for shutting them as though completely unaware of what the government funds. He could really do with looking it up. If only there were the places with the resources to read up on it? Oh well. I mean, it seems at this stage of the election that actually Boris’s greatest skill is making us all realise that the former Prime Minister was actually more coherent and personable than we thought.

In other news but also the same news, there were two other debates that had some leaders but not all leaders and I could tell you about them but I honestly don’t know if you’d gain anything from it. I’m certain that Chief Secretary to the Treasury and man who looks like he’s modelled his entire life on looking like a stock photo of someone who just passed their BTech Rishi Sunak was only there to represent the Conservatives and Shadow Secretary for Justice and gormless Easter Island head on legs Richard Burgon was only there for Labour so that campaigners in their areas could get a break from them.

The YouGov MRP results came out last week predicting a Conservative lead with 359 seats and Labour down to 211, with Lib Dems on 43 and the Brexit Party gaining absolutely none. All of which is depressing considering that if that is the case, the next five years may prove the last three to have been the good times. Urgh. But polls have already started changing with Labour gaining, the Tories staying where they are and the Lib Dems losing. So, all I’m saying is with two weeks to go, is that something in your pocket or is this election looking well hung?

And this week US President and what happens if you encase a wind tunnel inside orange playdoh Donald Trump is visiting the UK, but Johnson has been advised to avoid him while he’s here. Maybe he’ll send his dad instead?

Oh and are they still around UKIP have unveiled their manifesto, with new leader who as everyone has pointed out looks like the Catherine Tate ‘Nan’ character with many of the same qualities and is called Pat Mountain, which is a long way of saying ‘heaps of bullshit. Their manifesto is titled ‘Brexit And Beyond’ which works as if they were a cartoon character they’d definitely be NoBuzz Shityear.

ADMIN

OH MY GOD! How long will next week’s intro be? Years probably. There has been too much happening in one week, and I left out loads. Shout out to Scottish, Northern Irish and Welsh listeners who I’ve completely ignored and I’m sorry but you can’t say I’m not on top of British politics when all the main parties and media are ignoring you too. Haha lets laugh at how entire country’s views are ignored but there’s loads of focus on how the Prime Minister fills his pie hole with baked goods. I am terrified of the election results but also hopeful because as I read at an exhibition several months ago and I think have mentioned on this show before, hope lies in uncertainty. Which is why people had loads of hope in the past because they knew fuck all. Now we know loads of stuff and are mostly depressed. Bring back ignorance I say. Actually, I don’t, and I’m still not sure that ignorance is bliss because if you were, say, ignorant to walking into an area with falling rocks then got hit by one, you wouldn’t be all that blissful. I was ignorant to how much sugar was in a milkshake this weekend and didn’t do enough insulin which wasn’t bliss and instead meant I was pretty spaced out for an afternoon and needed the loo loads. If anything, in that case, ignorance is piss. And that’s why I’m not allowed to make novelty slogan mugs.

Are you feeling Christmassy yet? It’s hard with the election isn’t it? Though if it is a Tory majority that will be quite festive in that they’ll be returning the UK to a state that Dickens would probably set a story in. What’s that? Tiny Tim has been found fit for work? And so on and so on. We now have our Christmas tree up which is only because my parents kept our one from last year in their garden and looked after it, which I’d forgotten about and am now boasting about how environmentally friendly I am. I’m certain I’ve put it too near the radiator though and my daughter will watch as her not ok not boomer dad single handedly kills a tree through overheating the environment and I feel like this is a horrible scaled vision of her future. Still for now, she’s mostly intent on tearing bits of it off which makes me wonder if young people aren’t the saviors of our planet after all.

Thanks for coming back. I know this podcast is in another cycle of being out of date before its even released but I appreciate that you still tune in to see what the past sounded like. Next week’s will be the last pre-election one so may be shorter as there’s really not a lot I can say or do that will last for more than two days, then I’ll do one on December 17^th which hopefully won’t just be me crying and swearing a lot. And why should it be different from all the normal episodes Tiernan? Yeah, fair play. And then I’m going to hibernate till January depending on how things go because this guy needs a break. My whisky and Playstation aren’t going to play and drink themselves, not in that order anyway. I mean, its unlikely I’ll get to do those things either because parenting but it’s even having time to think I might that counts. So as per usual, if you enjoy this show and can recommend it to someone before it takes a wee break, please do. If you can review the show that’d be even better on your apple podcasts or pod bean or where ever else a review might find a home for Christmas though it is also for life and if you have extra pounds or pennies, while you might want to save them for the Mega Tory No Deal Nightmarescape scenario, you could also buy me a coffee at ko-fi.com/parpolbro or patreon.com/parpolbro. I’m still trying to work out if its coffee or whisky to get me through election night and I’m thinking it may have to be both, followed by Gaviscon and sadness.

As you heard again at the top of the show, this week’s show is sponsored by NextUp Comedy who are not only proper good peoples who very much support comedians in the best of ways, their website is also actually very good with so many good comedians and comedy specials on there it is worth a looksie. Do check it out at nextupcomedy.com/tiernanisgreat and no seriously they did that not me, and you’ll get a free month’s subscription and I believe one person will win a year’s free too, which is nice. Also quick plug this week, as I start all the Frankie Boyle support slots but if you can’t get to those as they’re all sold out, I’m hosting the comedy club at Farnham Maltings this Friday which will be interesting based on my current election material, and then I’m on a lovely bill at the Gulbenkian Canterbury on Saturday on a night called Exploding Dream Cabaret which sounds good doesn’t it? I’ve popped a link in the pod blurb.

And lastly, admin-wise, I may have one too many pre-election interviews so depending on how it goes, I might release one as a bonus episode. Good idea? Bad idea? Let me know or say nothing which I will consider, based on recent political happenings, to mean approval.

Ok this week’s show I am speaking to Guy Taylor at Global Justice Now all about them 451 pages of NHS sell off documents, plus a mini look at the prison system and how everyone has got it all wrong over Friday’s terror attack. I mean not everyone, just the parties. There are lots of sensible people that got it right and I’ve just nicked all their thoughts because I haven’t got a clue. Thanks.

INTERVIEW WITH GUY

Last week one of the big stories about the election in amongst all the other big stories, was Labour revealing they had 451 pages of uncensored documents showing that government ministers had had talks with US officials that put the NHS on the table. You know that big table that now has all the Brexit deals, coalition possibilities and so much on it that frankly I’d just suggest eating out or getting takeaway as it’d be easier. The documents showed the details of six meetings between 2017 to July of this year with US officials and UK civil servants and at one-point former International Trade Secretary Disgraced MP Liam The Disgrace Fox. Which I suppose could favour the government as if they actually wanted to make any progress in these talks, the last thing they’d do is send the man who spent two years persuading the Faroe Islands to keep trading with us post Brexit. Great news everyone, its lava rock and cold sparseness sandwiches all round! These documents say that all would be to play for in a US / UK deal which is very scary from a country whose world series sports games only include themselves. Labour say all of this would lead to NHS privatisation and the cost of drugs increasing, for the NHS that is, not just on the street corner as demand thousandfolds as we all need something to pick us up if it’s a Tory majority. The Conservatives retorted by saying the meetings were just preliminary sessions to get an understanding of what each country’s trading policies and regulations are, which if that’s true, doesn’t need six meetings. All they had to do was try some US e-number filled cereal and see how long they think they can fly for, while US officials chomp Shreddies and feel sad inside while needing to shit slightly more. But is it all as simple as that, are we looking at the NHS being bought by Disney which means you’d get lots of unnecessary follow up treatments that feel a lot like the first one and ultimately fall short of doing anything for you? And what exactly is on the 451^st page?

Well this week I went to spend the afternoon with the excellent Guy Taylor who is the campaigns and activism manager at Global Justice Now, a group that campaign against injustice in a number of sectors including trade and have been warning of the issues of a post Brexit UK trade deal with the US for some time. They have been pivotal in getting those 451 pages revealed to the world and I got to ask Guy all about what the documents actually mean, remembering TTIP, and whether chlorinated chicken is worse than chicken that’s been in one of those natural swimming pools where all the wee just gathers instead. Ok not the last one. But we did mention the chickens and hope you find this chat as interesting as I did. Here’s Guy…

INTERVIEW WITH GUY PART 1

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

ELECTION FLEX

Every day of the past week I’ve been trying to figure out what to do this bit about. Shall I do it about racism in the different parties? Oh no wait, how about climate issues or how about how a twat eats a scone? But sadly with Friday’s terror incident and the incredible lack of facts going around to do with it I thought it’d be best for a comedy politics podcast to focus on the worst least funny incident this election. Hmm. Maybe this is why this show is never in the Apple Podcasts top ten. But don’t worry, I promise it’ll only be a few short sentences.

So according to the Home Secretary and only person to live entirely on the tears of children Priti Patel, Usman Khan the attacker was automatically released halfway through his sentence due to a law change that the Jeremy Corbyn’s party brought in in 2008. Aside from the fact that if this was true, the Conservatives have had 9 years to change that law, otherwise I guess you could presume they were fans of it? It is, unsurprisingly, not true. Sort of. Before 2008 there was a sentence called an EPP, yeah you know me, extended sentences for public protection which were life sentences given to criminals that were deemed particularly dangerous. Halfway through that sentence, the prisoner would go infront of a parole board and they would be released on licence if they were no longer seen as a threat to the public. But due to prison overcrowding, a lack of support for rehabilitation and far too many prisoners getting EPPs, in 2008 the law was changed so there’d be automatic release at the halfway point. Though still on licence so they can be recalled to prison at any time during the remainder of their sentence. But in 2012 the European Court of Human Rights said the lack of being able to provide rehabilitation programs for prisoners was unlawful and EPPs were changed to Extended Determined Sentences or EDS where prisoners would get automatically released 2 thirds of the way through their sentence if given less than 10 years or put in front of a parole board at that time if more than 10 years. Got it? Then in 2015 that all changed so that now all prisoners require parole board approval regardless. Except that in Khan’s case, he was sentenced in 2012 under the coalition government, and given a DPP sentence or dangerous offender to detention for public protection because his crime, which I won’t go into now because you’ve got lives, was deemed dangerous but not serious enough for a life sentence. The judge for his case decided 16 years was the appropriate sentence and so the minimum term was 8 years, but it went to the Court of Appeal who, long story short, decided an old type of EDS sentence would be best which means he served 8 and would’ve been on licence for another 8 plus another 5, which because I’ve done maths I can tell you is 13. To summarise, there’s a whole heap of changes that have happened in the court system and its not particularly one government or the other’s fault that this happened and instead it was a decision by the Court of Appeal based on their best judgement that sadly turned out to be incorrect.

But really the blame might be laid on all the cuts to prison and probation services which in a report released in April were said to be in an enduring crisis with a doubling of the prison population in the last 25 years but also staff shortages and a rise in drugs and self-harm in institutions. Rory Stewart, yes remember him? Like if a horse was shocked unexpectedly and seems to think he’s best placed to run for London mayor now on account of not being likable or from London. Well when he was prisons minister in the last government, he promised to resign within a year if conditions in ten prisons around the country hadn’t improved with a £10m cash injection. And those 10 did improve with a 16% drop in the rate of assaults and 17% drop in number of assaults and 50% reduction in positive drugs tests. But that was just 10 prisons out of 150. And even if a prison had been slightly improved, the life a prisoner might have once released on licence was bleak thanks to probation services that were reformed by Chris Grayling. Yes, remember him? The man who looks like an egg from a nightmare, the one who was like a shit-based King Midas with everything he touched. Grayling’s reform program outsourced probation services to 8 different providers, who, as them private companies tend to do, cut costs, laid off staff and didn’t supervise things properly at all, leading to a serious-crimes on parole rising by 50%. So all in all, its highly likely that someone like Khan didn’t actually get much rehabilitation treatment during his sentence at all.

So the Conservatives are now pledging that no terrorists sentenced with imprisonment will get an automatic early release which they wouldn’t anyway and nothing they’ve suggested in their manifesto is any different to how it is now. Instead they’ve pledged to make 10,000 more prison places although some of those are part of an expansion of HMP Full Sutton in Yorkshire which has had planned extension since 2016. They say they’ll also spend £100m on prison security plus recruit more prison staff which is good but part of the problem is not just the lack of staff but lack of experienced staff, with figures in June saying the prison system has lost 80,000 years of experience since 2010. There is a teeny paragraph in the Conservatives manifesto about rehabilitation and creating a prisoner education service focused on work based training and skills, and get a job coach but I couldn’t find any costings so it could be that someone gets minimum wage on a zero hours contract to tell prisoners how to deal with being on a minimum wage on a zero hours contract.

So that’s not all the detail and as you can imagine, there’s lots and lots to this, just none of it is being said by the Conservatives, or to be fair, not all of it is being said by the other parties either. It is ridiculous that for an argument about longer sentences, this election is showing how little time many politicians spend on theirs.

If you head to the website and listen back to the interviews with Emma McClure on episode 37 and 157 she talks all about the effects of cuts to the prison system on there.

And now back to Guy…

INTERVIEW WITH GUY PART 2

Thanks so much to Guy for a lovely afternoon at Global Justice HQ in Oval. They will likely be very busy this week with the Trump visit so keep an eye on all their socials. You can of course find Global Justice Now at globaljustice.org.uk or on Twitter at @globaljusticeUK and Guy can be found @guidotallman.

Next week is election week and as I mentioned earlier, I may have one too many interviews to put out before then so there’s a chance I’ll be releasing a bonus one, but we’ll see what happens. Then it’s the post-election mop up and then, here’s where you come in, I’ll be needing guests for next year. Who and what about? No one knows yet, but all suggestions are welcome. So please get in touch with what and who you’d like to hear from and you can do that at the contact page on partlypoliticalbroadcast.co.uk, the @parpolbro twitter, the Partly Political Broadcast facebook group or email me at partlypoliticalbroadcast@gmail.com. Or just send your dad and friend to pop over and tell me and when two strange men appear at my door I’ll call the police. It’s probably just easier to email isn’t it?

END

And that’s all for this week’s Partly Political Broadcast podcast. Thank you once again for popping this in your ear sockets. If you’ve enjoyed the sound that did flow into your brain then why not have a think about, and then have a do about, telling others to have a listen & subscribe to the show, giving ParPolBro a tasty review on Apple Podcasts or PodBean or one of them places or donating to the ko-fi or patreon pages.

Thanks, as ever to Acast, my brother The Last Skeptik who’s new album ‘See You In The Next Life’ is out now, and to Kat Day for scribbling up all the links for the website. And of-course to my dad Brian too!

This will be back next week when the Prime Minister announces that a vote for him is actually a vote for his dad, at least on Monday’s, Wednesday’s and Friday’s.

BYEEEEEEEEEEE

This week’s show is sponsored by Stanley Johnson’s reboot of a classic, Pinocchio, the animated story of a bumbling stump of wood who doesn’t at all want to be like those real boys as they disgust him and after being mentored by a small odious slug, and hiring all the donkeys on Pleasure Island to work as advisors, realizes lying is really helpful in getting you what you want and he lives happily ever after regardless of what happens to him because he’s rich. Stanley Johnson’s Pinocchio, one for all of your many families if you know where they are.

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