Further Reading

Isn’t it great that the government are doing the bare minimum you’d hope they’d do? I don’t know just how to thank them for being ambitious and bailing out the arts after some theatres have already had to close and announcing a new plan that is exactly like the old plan but worse. This week Tiernan looks at the new old deal, Sunak’s upcoming economic update and there’s a chat with barrister Geoff Whelan (@keep_it_brief) about the backlog of cases due to COVID19 and the changes the government are trying to push through.

Key links and sources of info from Geoff’s interview:

• • Geoff Whelan on Twitter – https://twitter.com/keep_it_brief
• • 9 St John Street on Twitter – https://twitter.com/9StJohnStreet
• • David Allen Green on Twitter – https://twitter.com/davidallengreen
• • The Secret Barrister on Twitter – https://twitter.com/BarristerSecret
• • Barristerblog on Twitter – https://twitter.com/Barristerblog
• • Shit Barrister on Twitter – https://twitter.com/shitbarrister
• • Open letter / petition against government proposals to make lawyers go to court during evenings and weekends – https://platform.organise.org.uk/campaigns/open-letter-lawyers-nights-weekends
• • Find out who your MP is to write to them – https://www.mysociety.org/wehelpyou/who-is-your-mp/

All the usual ParPolBro stuff:

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

Transcript

Hello and welcome to the Partly Political Broadcast, the comedy politics podcast that says it doesn’t believe in gestures but still always makes the wanker sign when PMQs is on the telly. I’m an increasingly tired Tiernan Douieb and this week as the Chancellor and Pinky without the Brain Rishi Sunak has announced a cash lifeline to the arts sector, will he just keep it in the cabinet which is currently full of clowns endlessly creating farcical drama for the nation?

Don’t worry everyone, it seems everyone is certain we’re about to be saved by Rishi Sunak, in the same way if you’ve been held hostage in a cellar it’s the kidnapper who once forgot to give you your daily punch in the eye that is definitely the nice one. On Wednesday this week the Chancellor will announce what was going to be an emergency budget but is now just a summer economic update, a worrying sign when even the title has had to have cutbacks. So far, it’s expected that he’ll raise the threshold for paying stamp duty because there’s nothing like boosting the economy by making it more affordable for people to buy houses that haven’t been built. That’s definitely where the emergency help needs to go to right? Ignore that the number of people in rent arrears has doubled, what about everyone who felt their garden wasn’t big enough for their horse to do laps around during the first lockdown, so they need a bigger one for round two? There will also be money for firms to take on traineeships so those young people desperate for work can do some of it completely unpaid. That’s what they need right, just to get out of the house to have somewhere different to not afford to eat? Maybe it’s because Rishi Sunak is married into a billionaire family that it’s hard for him to remember just how money works, but it does strike me that he’s the sort of man that would look at a the chicken, fox and grain puzzle and conclude that actually what the farmer needs is lower rates on a superyacht he can’t afford to put them all on instead, while giving a big corporate chicken farm cheaper rates start up in the area, saving the farmer the hassle of having a job in the first place. By the time you hear this you might know if the rumours that every adult will get £500 to spend on companies worst hit by the virus, which I’m assuming will somehow only include Wetherspoons, Richard Desmond’s Northern & Shell, JCB and the company Housing Secretary and conscious loofah Robert Jenrick will set up to buy his 15^th home. Of course the big announcement is a long overdue £1.57bn for gig venues and theatres which can’t be sniffed at, but until details are announced its hard not to assume Sunak will spend all of it on having 6 Royal Variety Performances a year, and on those dickheads who pretend to be statues or wear a shit Yoda mask in Trafalgar Square, because he finds them funny. Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden, like if you sculpted a person out of acne, said that the money won’t save every job so fingers crossed he’s talking about his. When asked if pantomimes would happen later this year, Dowden said they will if they can, as panto has all the things we love, such as kids screaming. So that’s probably why the Conservatives have had to finally support the arts as they won’t get that at any of their parties anymore now that Ghislane Maxwell has been arrested.

It’s a world leading fund for the sector though, unless you count all the other countries that beat us to it before any of their theatres had to close or have given more to support the industry. Apart from those, its world leading, if it’s helpful for all of your ideology if you pretend that past Britain’s shores there’s absolutely nothing else there. Why look at global coronavirus death tolls that are much smaller than ours when it’s clear they’re only tiny on account of no one else existing? Why see how other countries have done a track and trace system if you can’t contact creations of your imagination? There that’s better and now as you can see, our government definitely just doesn’t stop world leading, apart from Scotland who gave money to the arts before ours did and has lower death rates…ah shit. Ok, close in again everyone, until we just have a 6-metre radius around parliament and there we go. World leading. Uh huh. It’s much like the Prime Minister and upset bag of salad Boris Johnson and his new deal, which appears to be new in the way a reboot of a show you never liked in the first place is new, even if they’ve replaced the only decent cast members and removed anything at all you might have liked about it. In his big speech last week, standing at a podium with ‘Build, Build, Build’ scrawled across it like a knock off Lego conference, he said that the government’s coronavirus plan had gone really well in terms of building temporary hospitals no one used, and then said that people should clap for wealth creators, capitalists and financiers which doesn’t seem right as we only clap for the NHS because the government don’t give them money. My worry is all the people who would clap for financiers have probably got so much cocaine residue on their fingers that the applause would cause such a large white cloud that would lead to a national bullshitting epidemic. Oh wait, maybe it’s already happened? Johnson launched a raft of things that had already been announced earlier in the year but will now happen less or more slowly. Oh don’t worry, the 40 new hospitals will still be built, it’s just that we’ll now count each room in a hospital as its own building. There’s a new affordable house building programme that is just like the one announced in March but with less money and 3 more years to do it in. Johnson blamed the British state for failing to build enough homes. Do you think that’s how he refers to himself when coming to terms with his mistakes? Oh, the British state shook everyone’s hands again. Oh, damn the British state for disappearing for weeks on end. Oh, stupid bad, bad naughty British state for accepting holidays from lobbyists. He’s definitely a state, or at least in one, looking more and more everyday like a cake left out in the rain. Though apparently, he has now had his hair cut, and I’m guessing all the cuts went from the bottom and they left the top 1% alone or even added to it.

This is the news we get reported about the PM now. There’s no querying why his new deal isn’t new, or if how, as he said on Friday, he refuses to take a knee alongside the Black Lives Matter protests because he doesn’t do gestures, what does he think all the things he does every other day are? Or if he’s aware of who he is? Is it a Gollum like situation, where an alternate Boris Johnson personality appears and suddenly he’s stuck on a zip wire waving the Union flag like someone strung up a pig, or pretending to do press ups for a newspaper front page making it look like he’d toppled over from the weight of his ego and now can’t get back up. Then before he knows it, he’s back to being Boris again and oh, British state, why you do the gestures again? I mean for Mr No Gestures, it’s a shame no one warned him the day after his comment about Downing Street being lit up blue and having one single candle to remember over 40,000 coronavirus victims. I’m not sure they could’ve done any less unless they’d asked the man a single magpie would avoid Chris Grayling to try and fail to light it 14 times before spending £8m getting someone who’s never seen a candle before to do it. Couldn’t they at least have had one candle for every person who died or was that too risky in case it made Number 10 look like the ‘everything is fine’ meme they’re trying desperately to avoid. Johnson must’ve been furious, as that sounds like exactly the sort of gesture he probably doesn’t like doing, especially as some of those people that died were also black and it’d have required him remembering they existed. But it gets worse. The next day, Mr pro-gesture critic joined in with a nationwide clap for the NHS’s 72^nd birthday, you know, like how a supervillain might sarcastically applaud the hero for surviving the first of its many traps. Why didn’t anyone tell him it was a gesture or was the PM led outside and told there was an invisible seal balancing a ball on its head and he got all excited?

If the Prime Minister had just known it was a gesture, he’d probably have avoided it. I mean, what else does he need to do for the NHS? By making sure pubs were open on Saturday, the place where according to the Texas Medical Association has the worst risk of catching COVID19, what better present for the National Health Service then by making them feel really needed and wanted? Or at least know they will be in about two weeks time. The lockdown has been eased off its hinges, and people started boozing from 6am on what the Prime Minister kept calling Super Saturday, probably because like many of the caped hero films its exactly the same COVID origin story that we’ve seen several times before. The early start time was allowed to try and stop many from opening at 1 minute past midnight, because if there’s one thing you can’t keep a Brit from, its drinking until you don’t care about the facts. Areas like Soho in London were rammed full of revellers because as we all know, or made up while drunk, coronavirus can’t infect your blood if it’s mostly alcohol, probably. Of course, this is the people being irresponsible as the government definitely did warn people to be careful, with the Prime Minister telling people not to blow it, a confusing message when partnered with the Chancellor encouraging people to eat out to help out. He also attended a Wetherspoons pub on Saturday with Home Secretary and walking spike strip Priti Patel, medical waste in a suit Michael Gove and Wetherspoons boss Tim Martin, a man who looks like Rockbiter from Neverending Story was tenderized using a car wash. The four of them posed for several photos like an animatronic version of the Chamber of Horrors and honestly, I can’t think of a better pub deterrent than that. Anyone who says Johnson hasn’t done enough clearly doesn’t realise how much those four like the Axis of Primeval would cause people to social distance like nothing else. On Sunday the Police Federation chairman said it was crystal clear that drunk people cannot distance, which isn’t true as whenever I’m pissed, I always make it home so quickly I don’t even remember the journey. So obviously it’s all the public’s fault if there’s a second wave, in the same way, 20,000 people dying in care homes is care homes fault says the Prime Minister, and not at all the government saying COVID19 patients could be discharged back from hospitals to care homes even if tested positive. But then maybe the care staff should’ve barricaded the doors and allowed their patients to die in the front garden? Actually, based on how the Home Office policy, that probably would be the government’s advice. According to Johnson too many care homes didn’t follow procedures, which is probably because there weren’t any and the government mostly forgot about them. He has acknowledged though that social care is in need of more funding but I’m worried it’ll never appear and then he’ll just blame the sector for not using it.

In Leicester they held the safest pub opening policy by not opening any as they’re currently under a local lockdown, having apparently 10% of the positive cases in the country, which is selfish but of course if they shared it round it’d be worse. Local police weren’t given any guidance on the area that needed to be on lockdown until after Health Secretary and nervous scallop Matt Hancock made the announcement last week. He obviously decided to give the virus a head start and will no doubt now chase after it like in the Fugitive and I hope to see Hancock standing somewhere in Glenfield shouting about searching every gas station, residence, warehouse, farmhouse, henhouse, outhouse and doghouse in the area only to find they’re all Robert Jenrick’s and give up. The death toll and daily infections are now at a real low, which is great news though we also won’t know what that’s based on anymore as the daily stats of people tested will no longer be revealed by the Department of Health as apparently the same person may get retested, so instead they’ll just show the overall figures so it looks like they’ve done more. I’m sure that next they’ll stop publishing the daily death toll as they’ve realised they were accidentally counting whole swathes of people they didn’t care about and its just nicer if the numbers are smaller isn’t it? I don’t know about you but I’m starting to miss the daily briefings that we had from March through June, because it was always such a confidence boost to see someone being even more useless during lockdown than I was. However White House style press briefings will be introduced in October, though it’s not been stated if its White House style in terms of how the US do it, or it’ll just be endless bullshit just like the ones from US President and flatulent grapefruit Donald Trump. These will apparently be hosted by an experienced broadcaster which based on the level of the cabinets expertise in their jobs means it’ll either be racist whisperer Darren Grimes or a seagull strapped to a loudhailer.

A list of countries that will be exempt from quarantine for travellers arriving back to England from them, has been listed but Portugal isn’t on there, despite having 7 times fewer COVID cases than the UK. It is however the 2^nd ranked country in the world for moral freedom and 18^th for social progress so maybe the British government are terrified that people will go there and come back infected with actually good ideas. One place that isn’t on the list is the US, but contents of an old paint tin you’ve found in a shed in the woods Nigel Farage was boasting about being at the pub as soon as doors opened on Saturday, less than two weeks after his trip to the US for Trump’s rally, meaning he breached quarantine rules. You think he’d be a bit more concerned about flying over foreign bodies and giving them access to British homes. Similarly, the Prime Minister’s father and mugged duvet Stanley Johnson dodged regulations to fly to Greece. As well as the whole one rule for them horror, this is the man who said most of the British public were too thick to spell Pinocchio but seems clearly to have misread Cretan Islands. The Prime Minister repeatedly refused to comment on his dad flouting the rules, and I don’t think it’s fair that we assume it’s like father, like son as I mean when has Boris Johnson ever fled abroad to the detriment of the country? Oh.

Three quarters of British businesses are cutting jobs, including many high street retailers such as John Lewis who are outsourcing their IT sector to an Indian company. I’m guessing this year’s Christmas ad will involve Father Christmas hiring cheaper elves in the Faroe Islands to make all the toys, telling his lot they’re now redundant as an acoustic version of ‘Hello, Goodbye’ is sung by edited stock footage. Ministers have pledged to double job centre staff though, which will probably be most of the jobs they’ll be able to advertise within them. What won’t help businesses is the very high likelihood that we’ll now be leaving the EU at the end of the year without any deal, as the deadline to extend the transition period has gone and the British government are trying their best to not agree anything. Johnson said an Australia Deal, which is the new slang for no deal on account of how it’ll turn British business on its head, would be fine and says it’s a very good option, which is quite a change of tune from his boasting of an ‘oven ready deal’ last year. Which is definitive proof he has absolutely no idea how to use an oven and there’s every chance he put the deal in there last year, but never turned any dials and can’t figure out why it’s gone cold. Who knows, maybe last minute there’ll be a new deal or world beating plan to pull everything together last minute by doing exactly the same as the last deal or insisting there’s no other countries to trade with anyway.

In other news, the UK is imposing sanctions on 49 people and organisations behind the worst human rights abuses of recent years, but no news on when the Home Office or company that did the Grenfell cladding will be added to the list. The British government have said up to three million Hong Kong residents will be offered the chance to settle here, after China pushed through their frightening new anti-protest law. I think it’s really great that all those Hong Kong citizens can escape being persecuted for wanting to live in their own country and seek refuge here where they’ll probably be persecuted for being from somewhere else. I joke, this country doesn’t compare to the scary methods China use just yet, as their police upsettingly used water cannons on protestors whereas our Prime Minister had to sell his at a massive loss. China has warned the UK not to interfere with Hong Kong, and also about deciding against the contract with Huawei for our 5G network which is odd as you think breaching international laws would make them want less coverage.

And lastly, former PM and always a Jurassic Park promo card cut out attached to a pallet truck Theresa May got very angry in the Commons at Michael Gove for the political security advisor appointment saying pencil dots on some mumps David Frost had no expertise. That’s incredible. I can’t imagine being so shit that you make Theresa May have emotions.

Meanwhile Labour leader and actually my hair is the first wave Keir Starmer has vowed to take unconscious bias training, though I’m not sure from its name if that’ll just make him even more skilled at what he’s racist about. On a trip to a brewery, Starmer held a ‘Barnard Castle Eye Test’ beer as a dig at the PM’s special advisor and 4chan squidward Dominic Cummings, because you know that’s easier than calling for him to resign. It does depress me that the current state of opposition in this country is a man who manages to even make the ‘hold my beer’ meme rubbish.

ADMIN –

Word ParPolBro-ers, how’s things? Isn’t it sad that I can’t be happy about the government’s arts funding announcement yet but it’s impossible to take any of their announcements as good news when what’s expected is that they’ll spend £1.57bn on the Royal Opera House to buy Richard Desmond a magical box he can sit in, and everyone else will get told they can work for free using their excellent projection skills as human air ventilation, breathing in potential germs on crowded transport. I had a few people online get angry with me about how no money they announce will be enough for the chattering classes, which while I know that’s a mostly derogatory term, it does suit comedians very well. But it also made me wonder that some people must just see these announcements about things being ‘world leading’ and then believe it. Imagine how easy that is to exist? And also, where do they live as I reckon come the purge they’ll be the easiest people to scam for cash. Someone else asked me why the arts should get money when it would be better going to people to go see arts as its unaffordable for most. That’s a weird one as they were right, theatre especially can be crazily expensive mostly because to uphold all costs in an often poorly funded industry, which them makes it for the rich, who then also vote in the Conservatives who then don’t fund it properly which then makes it for the rich and blah blah blah the never ending story. But at the same time, most of us idiots who work in entertainment aren’t Benedict Cumberbatch and can’t afford to live most of the time, let alone now, and there’s also all the important staff at venues like front of house, cleaners, security, tech staff, the list goes on. So, if none of them are supported and the venues go under then it won’t be for anyone at all and you have 3m unemployed. Its also baffling that people think it’s a competition. Oh the government can’t fund everyone so may as well let you all drown. The reasons they can’t fund everyone are because they’ve underfunded everything for 10 years so as far as I’m concerned, they can work this shit out. Until we have a no deal and we have to replace currency with fighting and tribal warfare. Basically, give me the £1.57bn Oliver Dowden, who I’m certain thinks culture is watching repeats of Men Behaving Badly & occasionally going ‘ooh’ at a print he’s seen in IKEA, give it to me and I’ll spend it on good things and also some crisps.

Isn’t it depressing that the world has gone through a major event like this, where everyone has been effected and rather than everyone say ‘hey what we should do is use this as an opportunity to reform and change all the structures that cause pain and suffering into something more positive?’ lots of people have gone ‘oh well you were shit anyway, get out of my way I want to vomit on a beach while getting a tattoo saying lick my COVIDS on my bum.’ The website Medium recommended a post to me this morning and it was an incredibly bleak outlook that says all the following decades will be worse than this one due to climate change and the resulting collapse of infrastructure and society and while it was a tad over the top, maybe, I did also think oh well, we probably deserve it. I don’t think I’d do well in a dystopian future. They don’t even have crisps in a lot of them. What am I talking about? I don’t know, it’s just nice to talk to people still isn’t it? What a novelty in 2020, as is being one of the 7m podcasters that currently exist and knowing I have you lovely lot listening in. It does seem like most people I know now have a podcast and I keep thinking ha, you idiots, I started this nearly 4 years ago so I’m way ahead of you at shouting into the void. Gotta be professional at something I guess.

Big time thanks this week to Anika who joined the Patreon, thank you and it should be any day now where they’ll let me change it from dollars to pounds which should make it all easier for any of you Brits that are listening. Or anyone else in the world as our currency becomes worth less than mud and when it does, I will take mud donations of course. Anyway, you too can sign up to that at patreon.com/parpolbro should you wish to support me and the podcast. Or donate at ko-fi.com/parpolbro which you can also do, and thanks this week to Christine, Daz, LJ, Somebody, Pablo and Mark for donating there and you are all absolute champs for doing so. Of course, if you can’t donate because you too, like me, now have no real purpose in life, then please do give the show a review on any of those podcast apps what there are, and maybe just even tell people about this so they too listen in.

This week on Thursday the 9^th I’m doing an online gig called Comedy Roulette hosted by the excellent Vix Leyton, which will be on twitch.tv/neonmingo and link will be in the podcast blurb. I believe we’re just given random subjects and have to be funny about it which sounds fun and also terrible. It starts at 7.30pm. And on Friday I’m going to attempt another go at doing a live podcast at 8pm on Ramble FM. I’ve popped the link in this podcast blurb again and will be posting about it nearer the time. Please listen but also call in if you can, and we can have some chats about Rishi Sunak’s economic statement or you know, something actually fun. Hopefully it will all work this time. And lastly, I think I’ve got about two more of these in my energy banks before I need a little break for my own sanity. I’ll try not to go away for too long but it’s becoming tricky working out every week how to make a joke about Boris Johnson saying something then doing the exact opposite a day or so later, and about how everything is terrible. I usually have a break this time of year due to you know, people going on hols and that, and I understand this year is different. So, I’ll see how it goes but I may take a couple of weeks off then maybe do some mini episodes through August of just the comedy intro bit and nothing else. Lemme, know what you think. It’s sort of hard to decide when best to do this when the last few years have been a solid silly season.

On this week’s show I have barrister Geoff Whelan talking about what coronavirus has done to the legal system and courts, and I’m gonna tell you all about how Boris Johnson’s New Deal isn’t actually new at all. What? Yeah, I know, I mean who knew. Who knew? Yes everyone. See what I mean? I don’t even have a funny way to talk about it again here, I’ve run out. It’s incredible that the only certainty we have is that everything our Prime Minister says is likely to be bollocks. I’ve already used the doors in Labryrinth comparison too many times. And the boy who cried wolf. It’s getting to the point where I need other people to be total shit rags so I can call them a Boris Johnson. Sigh.

INTERVIEW WITH GEOFF PART 1

The coronavirus hasn’t been easy for the legal sector at all. I mean it’s hard enough for detectives like say Hercule Poirot to gather everyone together to explain who the killer is, as they’d already be so far away from him they’d probably leg it before he’d managed to explain why the butler didn’t do it as they were quarantined in the kitchen. But in the real life, justice is more blind than ever as a lot of criminal trials in particular aren’t getting to see their day in court. It’s not really possible to have a jury of people sit together and discuss whether they think a defendant is guilty or not, and it doesn’t really work for discretion if you’re having to shout your reasoning across a park. There is currently a backlog of over 40,000 criminal cases that have nowhere to go, which is unfair on victims, defendants and indeed barristers who get paid by taking on cases but can’t because technically right now, all cases are rested. This isn’t just coronavirus’s fault of course, but much like with many other sectors, if you collect all the evidence, you’ll find it’s just an accomplice to years of the government deciding legal aid could be removed from those who need it and court spaces sold off. While Batman says Justice Never Sleeps, there’s quite a lot of people in former court rooms that are now luxury flats who are snoozing pretty well on its remnants. So, what are the government’s proposals to sort out this backlog? So far they’ve included flouting the idea that trials could happen without juries because nothing sounds more sensible than allowing largely unrepresentative judges to become judge, jury and well, god knows where that will lead. Luckily that idea seems to have disappeared but what else? Can you have a virtual courtroom and how could you tell if the jury are paying attention or missing vital evidence doing what I do on every zoom call and looking at twitter while witnesses can’t work out how to unmute themselves and there are decisions of undue influence as a defendant’s kids change their background to something from Despicable Me.

This week I spoke to Geoff Whelan, a barrister in Manchester who is on the criminal team at the 9 St John Street chambers. As in the team of barristers who deal with criminal cases, not an arch villain member of a criminal team that they consult for tips. Which would be cool. Sorry awful. I mean awful. Anyway, Geoff has over 20 years at the bar, again as in council, not…oh you get it, working on a wide range of serious criminal cases. He’s also lead events for the Skeptiks in the Pub group about different aspects of the law and I was very pleased that he had time to explain to me just what is or rather isn’t happening in the legal system right now, what needs to happen to fix the cases backlog and whether he bothers to wear a whole suit when he attends settlement hearings. Hope you enjoy, here is Geoff:

INTERVIEW WITH GEOFF PART 1

MIDDLE BIT

I’m not sure if you watched Boris Johnson’s speech last week as its likely you had much better things to do like run repeatedly into a tree or try to eat a lamppost. If you did, you’ll have heard a whole ton of unimpressive waffle about all these new plans for a post Corona UK which I guess means we might see them in 2050 or thereabouts. There were warnings that the recession we’re driving into will be worse than the 2008 one, that there will be a reform of social care which is a nice way of saying they’ll probably sell it all off, and apprenticeships for every young person because otherwise you might have to pay them for work. He also wouldn’t promise a pay rise for the NHS because they’ve saved his life now and he’s done a clap so what else do they want? There’s also lots of hints about tax rises and maybe tax cuts if they’re his friends. We will know more this week after Rishi Sunak’s statement on Weds. But for now, these new plans were all banded together with Johnson’s calls to be ambitious about the UK’s future, which means perhaps we can conceive of getting rid of him at some point soon. Actually, nothing he announced was really ambitious as such and was more a lot of things he’d said earlier in the year or in the Conservative manifesto but has rewrapped them and said they’re new and hoped no one will notice the teeth marks in them.

For example, Johnson said there would be a £12.2bn affordable homes programme, supporting up to 180,000 new affordable homes over 8 years. Except this was announced back in March, when it was announced as over 5 years so technically, this is a cut, with less money per year than before. The Ministry of Housing say it isn’t a cut, but the fund is for over 5 years and the building of the homes will be for over 8, so maybe they’re just working in time it’ll take to get rid of all the details about what money they let Richard Desmond avoid paying this time. Even in March the £12.2bn fund wasn’t all new, with £9.5bn being shiny dosh, but the rest being reallocated from existing building funds that they hadn’t done anything with. I mean there is something to be said for refurbishing building funds so they’re now usable but it’s not really a new programme if it’s the same old programme but on later and for longer. They do that with TV shows and they just say it’s a repeat with extra bits.

There was the announcement again that they will build 40 new hospitals, which is the same thing they said in the election campaign and it was proved untrue then too. Its actually 6 hospitals that have been given money to upgrade and 38 others have been allocated money to do some building work between 2025 and 2030. So not new hospitals, but new bits of old hospitals and maybe some nice paintwork. Honestly if the government were a car dealership they’d have terrible google ratings from people who bought a new car and found it was an old car with an IOU note promising to buy it a new exhaust in 5 years time. Back when it was originally announced, Johnson also said it was £1.8bn of new funding but actually it was money NHS trusts had already been given and were told they couldn’t spend yet. But I mean I’m glad they waited to allocate it until after the coronavirus otherwise it’d might’ve been wasted saving lives eh? Eh?

As well as old bits presented as new, there are new bits that are just shit. For example, Johnson said there’d be 30% off new homes for first time buyers, but that will only include 1500 homes to begin with, and they’d have to build them first. So considering stamp duty is going which will cause a stall then demand in the market upping all house prices, that 30% off might mean it will only bankrupt you twice to get somewhere that Richard Desmond has probably built using some supplies he got at a sale. Johnson also announced plans to rip up planning regulations meaning that commercial properties could become residential properties without much planning permission needed. What that means is its likely you’ll be sleeping in a box room in a former call centre that hasn’t got working electrics and no one can do anything about it. Johnson said it was to stop newt counting by eco campaigners, which is not great news for any hopes of a greener country, especially as it means less protection for green areas and lower environmental standards too. Basically it just allows wealthy developers to cut costs and build windowless human filing cabinets out of unsuitable properties. Then again, I guess if the air pollution is really bad due to the environmental destruction, a lack of windows isn’t a bad thing. But for every shoebox a family are shoved into, I’m sure Richard Desmond will donate to the Tory Party and allow Robert Jenrick to sit on his lap for at least 10 minutes.

Johnson announced a social care plan that they won’t wait to fix, but earlier this year he said they planned to do it by the end of 2020, and then Matt Hancock announced actually, the plan might not arrive till 2024. Now Johnson’s saying its all care homes fault that there were so many deaths, chances are the plan will be for Richard Desmond to turn all the carehomes into luxury coffin shaped flats for people to squish into and social care will be largely neglected all over again. It’s also worth noting that Johnson’s plan overall is for £5bn of spending projects but that’s a drop in the ocean of money spent on the support packages for coronavirus bail outs, which so far the furlough scheme has cost over £25bn and the business loan schemes nearly £43bn, and Crossrail will cost £18bn and HS2 over £100bn. So in terms of infrastructure £5bn isn’t that much and will probably only really amount to putting a load of neon signs saying ‘new’ in front of existing buildings.

Then there was Johnson’s promise of an opportunity guarantee, meaning that every young person will be given an apprenticeship or work placement, which details say can last from 6 weeks to 6 months and will include a maximum of 240 hours work, which won’t be paid. Free skills training is great but I’m not entirely sure that a whole generation of young people want to come out of job losses in a recession to be told they can work for experience. There’s also no details yet on if it includes current year 13 or year 11 school leavers or if it’ll take so long to come into place it’ll only benefit their grandchildren.

But what did you expect from a Prime Minster who used to write a new after dinner speech for every occasion that had the same exact three stories in? As with everything, we’ll have to wait and see and you never know, I may be so inspired by what Sunak announces on Wednesday, that I may write a whole new bit about it, which will be exactly the same as this bit, but with less jokes and I’ll really slur all my words so it takes ages.

And now back to Geoff….

INTERVIEW WITH GEOFF PART 2

Big thank yous to Geoff for that. You can find him on Twitter at @keep_it_brief, see what he did there? I’m a fan. And if you are Manchester way and need legal rep, do check out the 9 St John Street Barristers Chambers, who are also on twitter @9stjohnstreet.

Who else’s face sounds do you need to hear on this show to enlighten your brain diodes? What other political subjects or issues do I need to ask someone about because I don’t have a clue but also, you know, you’d like to know about it too, or at the very least, hear me get schooled? Let me know and you can of course do that @ParPolBro on Twitter, the Partly Political Broadcast facebook group, the contact page on partlypoliticalbroadcast.co.uk or email me at partlypoliticalbroadcast@gmail.com. Or you could stand at a podium and shout the same interviewees I’ve already had on this show but say ‘new’ a lot and pretend you’ve come up with them all by yourself. But let me tell you it won’t work because I’m not fooled by…ambitious you say? Oh ok. WAIT! No, I’m not having it. As always, it’s probably just best to email isn’t it?

END

And that’s all for this week’s Partly Political Broadcast podcast. It is of course the end of the show, which regular listeners will know means that it’s time for the legendary PARPOLBROHOTGOSSFACT where I will deliver to you, a secret political gossip fact that very few on this earth know, mostly because I made it up in my head. So this week, as everyone questions if the government opened the pubs too soon, because making it a query rather than a statement makes it seem like there’s still the possibility of hope, which politician made the biggest ever error of judgement? No it wasn’t Athenian statesman and general Alcibiades who insisted it was a great idea for Athens to invade Sicily in the Peloponnesian war, and then led the charge, lost really, really badly and defected to the Spartans because if you can’t beat them, then join someone else who won’t have heard how shit you are. Nor is it the former PM Theresa May when she decided to have a snap election in 2017 without stopping to consider that she was less personable than a walk-in meat freezer and lost her parliamentary majority. No instead it is human pudding bowl and racist Winston Churchill who just after his ‘we shall fight them on the beaches’ speech, had holiday operators on the phone telling him they’d had to cancel his all-inclusive holiday to costa del sol as they didn’t want that sort of behaviour there. Let me tell you, his wife and kids were furious. DEFINITELY TRUE PARPOLBROHOTPOLGOSSFACT there. Definitely. And if you enjoyed it and will shout it at someone across a socially distant pub as your gem of knowledge, don’t, because shouting causes germs to fly with great and admirable speed. Instead why not tell people what you know, or even animals you’re fond of, to subscribe and listen to this here podcast. Maybe even do it a review on the podcast apps or if you can, donate to the ko-fi or patreon sites as Oliver Dowdon hates my kind.

Danke Schon to Acast, my brother The Last Skeptik, Kat Day and Mushybees.

This will be back next week when Oliver Dowden announces that as part of the arts package, he and his colleagues will perform a live televised panto this Christmas, but anyone who shouts ‘oh no you didn’t’ will be banned and any calls of ‘its behind you’ will be responded to with ‘yes and that’s why we have to move on.’

BYEEEEEEEEEEEEE

This week’s show was sponsored by brand new children’s book Rishi Sunak Saves The Day, a story that on the cover is an exciting adventure for all ages, but on the inside has several large parts missing, with extra content only available for extortionate fees and a lot that you have to do all by yourself but will only get credit for if you do it wrong. Rishi Sunak Saves The Day, available ages after you needed it to be.

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