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Transcript

NEWSTRADAMUS – 2019/20

Knock knock, who’s there? Why would anyone bother me during the Merrineum? Piss off, I’m too busy finishing off all the leftover chocolate and crisps before January starts so I can then get healthy and by that I mean losing the stone I’ve gained eating all the leftover chocolate and crisps. No wait, do answer the door, because listeners it’s me Tiernan Douieb here at the Partly Political Broadcast and I do hope you’ve had a lovely week of minimal family arguments. But look, it’s very nearly 2020, or as I call it, the year of the owl because two-oh two-oh right? But also because I am a dad and that’s exactly the level of jokes I make now in order for my daughter to grow up hating me. What with the new year imminent and the new decade depending on your levels of ‘but there was no year 0’ party bore chat, it is of course time for the podcast tradition of some future predictions from the prognostabator and snorecaster that is Newstradamus! Tell us oh confusesayer, what will the politics of 2020 bring!

NEWSTRADAMUS PREDICTIONS

Greetings whackoltyes, it is I, Newstradamus, the man who doesn’t tell it like it is, because I’m too busy telling it like how it will be. I have just finished celebrating Christmas 2035 where Turkey has been replaced by jellyfish but most people say it is preferable to the years under President Erdogan. So now that I’ve finished my blankets in blankets which due to the levels of extinction in 2035 are just blankets, and my they are very chewy indeed, it is time for you to go forward and me to go back and look at the yeah ahead or behind for me so let’s come together and be middling. For 2019 was a year that in the future many historians won’t look back on because it’ll make them retch and they will unanimously agree to refer to it as the ‘blip’, a moment in time best glossed over. Museums will be encouraged just to commemorate it with a small booth containing a parental advisory sticker and a 30 second clip from the film Cats. But will it be more of the same in 2020 or perhaps different but with a familiar odour of like something has died behind your radiator but you’ll never be able to find it and every time the heatings on its like you’re cooking up a roasted turd? Well yes, yes it will but don’t worry as I, Newstradamus, will now give you the prescience to understand what lies ahead. Oh no sorry, its pronounced pre-science isn’t it? On account of there being absolutely no evidence whatsoever. So 2020 what bring you to the picnic of life? I do hope its sandwiches.

In July Boris Johnson will lose track of which lies he’s told and what’s actually true, leading to him denouncing Brexit as something cooked up by the opposition and gaslighting the idea that it ever happened. This confusion leads to hard Brexiteers denouncing leaving the EU as the sort of thing communists want and insisting we not only remain but actually move our entire parliament to Brussels. Nigel Farage is arrested after leading a bridge of octogenarians into a Budgens to smash all the overly bent bananas. The European Union, in horror at this turn around declare that the UK is no longer welcome and build large walls in the middle of the channel with Jersey becoming divided with East Jersey and West Jersey having dramatically opposed ideologies about how best to avoid tax. Meanwhile remainers, so adamantly opposed to everything Johnson does, insist Brexit did happen and how dare he ignore the will of the people, demanding that he won and should get over it. The withdrawal agreement passed in January so ultimately, it’s all pointless anyway. Very little preparation is made for Brexit but one big government announcement declares the M20 in Kent as the first ever new hipster lorry contemporary flat developments so that when it becomes an endless roadblock it instantly fulfills their starter home housing quota.

In March The Queen will suddenly die, or at least pretend to die on account of being horrified at the thought of ever having to read anything else written for her by Boris Johnson’s government. It will happen during a special episode of Bear Grylls The Island where her Maj, in order to save the other contestants, throws herself off a cliff edge while gripping onto Joe Wicks. However she uses Wicks’ body as a crash mat, allowing her to survive and hide on an island nearby for the rest of her natural life, aided by staff that Prince Andrew has had illegally trafficked there. As a consequence of this, no one is left to guard Prince Philip and he is arrested after shouting racial slurs at a pelican crossing that he’s trying to hump. Meanwhile Prince Andrew publicly announces he is no longer protestant but is instead going to join the Catholic Church as apparently that will fit his own personal beliefs better and no one there will ask him any tricky questions.

Johnson’s government will bring in 50,000 new nurses as promised by April but they’ll be playmobil ones, carefully positioned across various hospitals. As the patients complain, Matt Hancock will announce on Breakfast television that it is there fault for not being small enough for the nurses to help them and if they were true British people they’d only be about 7.5cm and anything else is traitorous. Hancock will then insist he and the government are all that height and during all photos and press interviews Larry The Downing Street Cat will be brought as close to the lens as possible to make him look appropriately bigger than the Prime Minister. Boundary changes and voter ID will all be brought in by November with England redrawn so that Dominic Raab’s constituency of Esher and Walton to be constantly extended so that wherever he travels to, he’s always near home as otherwise he gets scared and has panic attacks. ID required at elections will require voters to show a list of names they’ve considered giving any offspring whether they’re having any or not, and if none of them align with any of the cabinet’s first names or anyone mentioned in the song Mambo No.5, then you are barred from the polling station.

In February Priti Patel, influenced by the TV series Watchmen, brings in the policy that all police officers must wear masks for their own safety, but also in an attempt to ban the burka makes all mask wearing illegal in March. The entire police force arrests itself, which overcrowds the prison system, something Patel fixes by allowing any non-mask wearing criminals to be freed and granting them power to arrest the police. By June it is deemed safer to be in a prison in England than outside of one, but the idea of giving prisoners the vote is still unpopular with the public. Boris Johnson spends this entire time in the Caribbean insisting that he’s better able to protect the UK from there.

In September Jacob Rees Mogg signs the Book Of Azathoth during a dream and is never seen from again. In July Iain Duncan Smith, now knighted, tries to gallop through the country on a horse on a personal crusade to flick bogies at anyone he sees not at work. His attempt is thwarted by a horse with severe tendon injuries that was forced into service by IDS after he saw it in pain and assessed it as absolutely fine. Sajid Javid comes under fire by everyone when his Brexit budget contains absolutely no money for medical supplies but does put £6m aside making sure bankers can still get croissants from Pret.

In March, due to an influx of members who’ve never really liked the Labour Party joining the Labour Party, absolutely none of the candidates running for leadership win on account of Twitter being able to find something wrong about all of them. Instead Labour gets an interim leader who is a potato that someone has drawn a face on, but after the potato announces a policy of nationalizing crisps, two factions of the party say the face is a racist caricature and that potatoes are discriminatory against people who don’t like potatoes and the process starts all over again in July. By November Labour is deemed a proper party of the people after nearly every single member of the public has had a go at being leader, after which they go for rotating guest leadership which goes horribly wrong when Boris Johnson gets a go and everyone treats at as thought its just a bit of fun.

After the withdrawal agreement goes through, the Lib Dems trial a number of new political stances ranging from ‘Yellow’s a nice colour’ to ‘Come on, please. At least try it’ and even ‘We’re sorry about Jo but she’s gone now’, finally settling on just ‘Monkey Tennis’ which gains them 6 new members.

With the Brexit Party now gone, Nigel Farage’s reform party only lasts two months before it becomes obvious that most of the people he appeals to are terrified of more change. Instead he starts the ‘That’ll Do Party’ where he spends the year travelling around the country pointing at things that are already there and demands that someone make sure they’re still there and continue to happen while somehow blaming the possibility they might not be on immigration. Britain First, after many of their members join the Conservative Party, get thrown by Johnson’s pandering to Trump and his America First ideal, but then three of their members learn to read and find out that second is in fact the best, before changing their name to Britain Third in the hope of chest hair gain.

Racism in the UK continues to increase until pollution levels get so high due to government inaction that everyone appears green and no one has the lung capacity to shout things. Instead due to a typo hat crime becomes a thing with nationalists insisting on only wearing fascinators and flat caps and denouncing anyone who wears a trilby, Stetson or other head attire. The 7004^th Labour leader, an 8 year old boy from Ilkeston is called ‘the biggest threat Britain has ever seen’ after he wears a baseball cap with a propeller on after getting it for his birthday.

Robots. Oh god robots.

In the US, Donald Trump’s presidential re-election looks like it’ll fail when he tweets at 4am during August asking if anyone knows Elizabeth Warren’s three digit security code on the back as he’s wants to fraud her card to order a ton of inflatable party sheep and Nicholas Cage pillows. However, at the final Democratic caucus due to an admin mistake, its announced that La La Land is the winning candidate and as a result Trump wins the presidency for a second term as no one really liked that film.

Greta Thunberg causes outrage when she says that all she wants is for her generation to be alive in their 40s and have food and stuff, but several commentators call her selfish and inconsiderate and insist that actually it will be really good for children to swim every day as at least that way they won’t be obese.

Finally these things will be big in 2020 should you wish to get in early: chard, candles that smell like a 2 star hotel foyer, Andi Peters, round things but with one pointy bit, remakes of reboots but with a cast entirely made up of cardboard cut outs and a man called Stewart carefully moving them all for every scene, Punch Your Neighbour Day and of course, shoes that look like gloves and gloves that look like shoes.

There is of course more that will happen but I know how people feel about spoilers, so I’ll leave it there. May you have a fantastic new year, even though, as you’ve heard, there’ll be that whole robot thing which, oh god, I mean, it’s just awful. What I can yet again predict though is that it will, as always, be interesting and occasionally made much worse by weekly installments of the Partly Political Broadcast which should bore you to sleep inbetween being kept awake by concerns you’ve not boarded up all the windows in time for the Purge. Good luck out there! Mwah!

Er…yeah, I doubt any of that will happen but then last year Newstradamus did predict that Theresa May’s Withdrawal Agreement deal would go through after they called it ‘Not May’s Deal’ and that is sort of what happened, only worse. Anyway, this podcast will be back in a few weeks once I’ve finally digested the last roast potato and can use my computer without getting out of breath again. But until then, please do pop a review on Apple Podcasts or where-ever you like, donate to the ko-fi or Patreon so my new year can start with caffeine and spread the word so at least 2020 gets even more people listening to this and hopefully laughing instead of crying. This show may not be on any top podcasts of the year round ups but that just means its cool and underground, like er, some crypts. Er. Yeah.

Have a very happy new year!

BYEEEEEEEEEE!

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