Further Reading

Linear liner notes 

Dom’s gone, Johnson’s not allowed outside and everything is because of Lee Cain which you all knew because you all know who that is obviously. This week’s podcast is on the government reset which won’t work because you can’t reset something that’s inherently broken, a look at the Human Rights Select Committee’s report into Black People, Racism and Human Rights, and a chat with Rachel Flower and Chris Anderson at Excluded UK (@excludedUK) about the 3 million people Rishi forgot.

Key links and sources of info from Rachel and Chris’s interview:

• • Excluded UK on Twitter – https://twitter.com/excludeduk
• • Excluded UK website – https://www.excludeduk.org/excluded-uk-an-inclusive-alliance-for-the-excluded 
• • Excluded UK Facebook group – https://www.facebook.com/excludeduk 
• • Mind the Gaps hashtag on Twitter – https://twitter.com/hashtag/MindTheGaps 
• • Find your MP 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

Ep211

Hello and welcome to the Partly Political Broadcast, the comedy politics show that is the veritable Princess Nut Nuts of podcasts. I’m Tiernan Douieb and this week Prime Minister and lopsided uncooked lasagne Boris Johnson has insisted that being told to self-isolate by the NHS app will make no difference to the amount of work he would be able to do, so it’s good to know he’ll be running around Number 10 pissing about avoiding all his meetings like normal then. Johnson and four other Conservative MPs have all received the alert to stay at home after MP and Crimewatch extra Lee Anderson tested positive after meeting them and then lost his sense of taste the next day, though really any accurate diagnosis would’ve confirmed he’d lost it around 2018 when he ran as a Tory MP and supported the use of forced labour camps. Johnson said he will be answering his Prime Minister’s Questions virtually, which again, is the same as usual then only this time I can 100% guarantee he won’t be wearing any trousers.

Self-isolating or not, Johnson may feel a lot more alone in Number 10 regardless as on Friday his own personal Jafar, special advisor and cursed matchstick Dominic Cummings resigned with little warning or prep, but then I guess his entire career is based on leaving in a hurried, ill-thought through but noisy way. In true Cummings style – though style is perhaps the wrong word for anything attributed to the man who wanders around in a beanie hat with his bum out, lurking around like he’d just survived a surprise attack by a jumble sale – in true Cummings disarray his departure happened at exactly 5.30pm on a Friday night just in time for the photographers who just by chance happened to be outside Number 10 and could take a picture of him leaving carrying a box of belongings like no one outside of an American film has ever done. It’s a surprise he didn’t shout ‘show me the money’ too, but then he was probably concerned it’d just lead to transparency about Dom giving it all to his mates. There is every chance the box just contained a drawing he’d done in crayon of his ideal lair on the moon, a half-eaten packet of fisherman’s friends and some pirate dvds. Cummings’ resignation was supposedly to clear the air, which will be awkward when they discover the stench is clearly coming from Johnson leaving wank socks behind all the radiators. No he didn’t leave because the Prime Minster saw sense and realised his breach of the COVID-19 regulations was completely out of order and caused a massive burst of public distrust as well as some real concerns about the safety of roads near Barnard Castle when people like Cummings are driving on them just to see if their kid can help them check if their eyes work. Nor did he leave due to concerns about all the public money he’s managed to get to all his friends to check public opinion when they could’ve just asked me and I’d have said, yes we all think you’re a twat. Instead, and I mean this is obvious really isn’t, it. He resigned or if you fancy believing it for escapism, was pushed out, due to the issues surrounding Lee Cain.

Lee Cain you say, of course! That man that no one has ever heard of and looks like something you’d be able to get removed on the NHS. Cain was Downing Street director of communications. Yes, I know, they actually had one of those for that torrent of vagaries they’ve been putting out for the past year. Making Cain in some ways, a more Avant Garde director than Marcel Duchamp, just without any intent to impress the mind. Or artistic talent. In fact, Cain was previously most well-known, although I realise that no one including me still has any idea who he is, for his time at the Daily Mirror where he dressed up as a chicken before the 2010 election and followed then candidate for Prime Minister and extra for the Munch Bunch David Cameron, putting forward a philosophical dilemma of just who was the bigger cock. Apparently, Cain was one of Cummings pals, because turds of a feather and all that, and was being pitched as a possible selection for the Downing Street Chief of Staff because who better to be in charge of people than someone who barely seems to be one. But Boris Johnson’s fiancée and stuck anamorph Carrie Symonds said she was uncomfortable with the idea and much to everyone’s surprise the Prime Minister actually paid attention to her lack of consent. As we all know, British democracy works on the basis of the Prime Minister’s unelected partner’s views, because this nation voted in someone they thought would best represent the willy of the people. And now the papers are filled with stupid internal gossip about behind the scenes of Number 10 and the PM’s personal life of the kind Johnson was certain the public weren’t interested in just last year. They’re still not especially when the details involve hearing about Dominic Cummings referring to Carrie Symonds as Princess Nut Nuts, because as we all know he’s a creative genius, if you’re in Year 6. How can he even be shit at nicknames? I mean off the top of my head I’d have at least gone with Cheeks McTwatterson, Carrie Gammonds, Bojoke’s Horsewoman, Carrie On Interrupting. Those are shit, but I’ve spent zero time on them and they’re still better than Princess Nut Nuts. Maybe he’s just tied to three-word slogans and his supposed gift with words is actually a hindrance if he ever wants to write a quatrain poem or you know, have a conversation without sounding deranged. Sorry, I mean a genius, obviously. It’s that sort of bullying that has apparently led Johnson to change his entire personality and support his current life partner of ten minutes, instead pushing away the man who’s dictated every stumble of his premiership so far. I’m not saying it’s not believable but when you’re known for impregnating women then running away, the only way Johnson would suddenly stand by one of future wives now is because long-term COVID effects mean he’s too slow to run away without losing his breath. One of the other pieces mentioned how Cummings’ favourite gesture in conversations was to pull the pin on an imaginary hand grenade and then throw it over his shoulder as he left the room, causing everyone to brace. Did they? Why? It’s so pathetically childish and would only be even vaguely respectable if as the imaginary grenade exploded, he was able to fart on cue every time and then run out and close the door. That would be intimidating. Fact.

Instead of playground politics, it’s better to note the language being used about the Cummings aftermath, that this is Johnson’s chance to reset the government. Except he’ll still be in it, so turning it off and turning it on again just means the malware gets a breather from its busy schedule of ruining everything. As part of the weekend newspaper tittle tattle, a senior Tory minister told the Sunday Times that if left to his own devices, Johnson wanders off from decisions to read Pliny or Pericles or eat or shag, in one of those sentences where the second half negates the first entirely. Pliny The Elder of course, a believer in science, the younger in law and Pericles in democracy, so I’m guessing Johnson mostly eats and shags then. A piece in the Guardian says it’s known that the Prime Minister just agrees with whoever he spoke to last, which was often Cummings, and once again you wonder why anyone ever back Johnson to be in charge of anything, and also why no one has bought him a parakeet for his office, with a pre-learned collection of phrases that could ruin him such as ‘have a snap election’ or ‘eat the silica gel’. Now Cummings has gone though, we can all pretend that Boris Johnson has eschewed the vote leave hard right polices and will instead embrace his more liberal character, you know the one that said Muslim woman in burkas look like letterboxes and who helped a friend hire someone to beat up a journalist. Cummings meanwhile gets to have no accountability for Brexit whatsoever and can instead spend his days trying to develop an AI that might actually befriend him and doesn’t just ignore his calls. There are rumours that the Prime Minister could have a role again for former chancellor and one of the main M&M characters Sajid Javid, which would be nice for Johnson to have a chief of staff who runs off on holiday instead of dealing with an issue at the same time he does. Who will replace Cummings? Someone worse probably. There’ll be some big announcement about the hiring of the ghost of Rasputin, Jake Paul or whoever made that Oscar Pistorius documentary. Johnson is set to announce a whole load of new policies that will invest in education, improve skills, create jobs and build back better, which is so much of a reset that he’s still using the same Cummings slogan but has added more words before it so now it’s been clarified exactly what he won’t manage to achieve any progress on. Already he’s picked a new climate change champion for next year’s COP26 conference and given the role to MP who looks like she says ‘rugger’ as often as possible Anne Marie Trevelyn, who is pro-fracking and protested against wind farms. I’m guessing Johnson thought ‘climate change champion’ just meant someone who is the best at making it happen. Everything will be exactly the same except we’ll be told its all different and the only major change is that several journalists will have lost their official government source but I’m sure they can just make up their own leaked intel by trying to imagine what the worst possible outcome would be and if Johnson was likely to be eating or shagging when the decision was made.

Meanwhile Johnson conveniently doesn’t have to meet anyone to answer any questions about any of it for at least 14 days, as definitive proof that Cummings leaving didn’t clear the air much or there wouldn’t be 5 ministers currently stuck at home right now. Lots of people don’t believe that Johnson has actually been told to self-isolate, not least because it’s unlikely sloth that’s had its hair done Dido Harding would be able to trace the MPs even if her and her team of zero hours untrained schoolchildren were handed photos of them altogether. One such photo of Johnson standing next to Lee Anderson exists and when it was criticised that they weren’t standing 2m away from each other, the Number 10 spokesperson said it was fine as they were side by side instead of face to face, so that’s great news for the reopening of the line-dancing industry. That feeling you get when there’s something behind you but you don’t see anything there and leader of the house of commons Jacob Rees-Mogg has changed his mind on allowing MPs to take part in Commons debates via video link up, having previously said it was not an effective way to hold the government to account. Hang on, maybe he was in favour of it. He says its due to MPs who being treated for cancer not being able to attend a debate on the illness but it is also aptly timed for the Prime Minister’s absence too. Mogg says he’s urgently exploring how to do it, which shouldn’t take that much effort considering zoom exists, but maybe he’s unable to see past having a zoetrope of their face shadow while a gramophone plays their questions and can’t work out how to fit those on the benches with him still having enough space to lie down.

50 rebel Tory MPs have formed an anti-lockdown protest called the Covid Recovery Group because as they say they want to protect the NHS, you know the reason we’re having a lockdown in the first place. One of the MPs is hateful Milhouse Steve Baker who has insisted that we must urgently find a way of living with the virus rather than destroying livelihoods, because otherwise there’ll be nothing left for the No deal Brexit he wants to do. The fact that the virus does destroy livelihoods by you know, destroying life, seems to have bypassed Baker’s chain of thought, but then this is Steve Baker who said free school meals would destroy the economy. So maybe his preferred action is that everyone dies and then that way no one will have to spend money on anything he doesn’t like? A second vaccine, developed by Moderna, is said to be 95% protective against the virus which is good news, and also means if they combine it with the Pfizer one which is 90% effective, then it’ll be 185% effective and maybe even give you reverse COVID or something. That’s how science works right? Right? It is exactly nonsense like that, that the Labour party have called for emergency laws to stamp out dangerous anti-vaccination content online, as many people are posting all sorts of nonsense about how it’ll contain a microchip, though I’ve no idea why McCain would want to do that when they’re much tastier when eaten. I say the misinformation should stay up as the government haven’t ordered enough vaccines anyway and by lots of people not having it, I’ll definitely get one and can out last them and eventually become king. Deputy Chief Medical Officer and I know I say it everytime but he’s a giant baby, look at him, Jonathan Van-Tam has said he would be at the front of the queue for a coronavirus vaccine, which either means he has shit queue etiquette and pushes in, or is very sadly about to be admitted to a care home any day now. Plans are being put in place for students to go home for Christmas in an evacuation style operation, which sadly doesn’t mean as in via helicopter by a team of covert operatives which sounds exciting, but instead evacuation-style as in it’ll be a shit one. And the government have announced that to double testing capacity, two new megalabs will be opening in 2021. I’m pretty sure megalabs are the ones with all the science but they also sell clothes, kitchenware and computer games too and have a really big car park. I wouldn’t go on a weekend.

Over in the US, the state of Georgia finally finished counting votes which confirmed unused Earthbound character Joe Biden as President elect and puts him with 6 million votes in the lead. So, when soon to be former President and forghorn inserted into a fishing buoy Donald Trump said it was close, he must of meant in the same way his relationship with his daughter Tiffany is. Trump still hasn’t conceded defeat but did start a tweet with an acknowledgment Biden had won, even if the rest of the tweet said it was by cheating, which isn’t true. Still, everyone took this to mean Trump knew he’d lost, and I think there’s something really poetic about the world wilfully misinterpreting what he’s said to change its meaning.

In other news the Department for Transport have approved a plan to build a tunnel by Stonehenge that goes against recommendation of planning officials and campaigners say will damage the foundations of the heritage. But I think the tunnel plans honour Stonehenge properly, you know in that no one really knows why they are happening and probably never will. And lastly, Labour leader and shoehorn with a face Keir Starmer featured on Desert Island Discs, insisting his music choices weren’t picked by a focus group, which means even they would’ve picked something more interesting and authentic. Starmer’s choice of book was ‘a detailed atlas, hopefully with shipping lanes, so I can get myself off this island’ but it’s not certain if he was playing the game or laying out his plans to abstain from parliamentary votes even more successfully in future.

ADMIN

Hey, hey, hey ParPolBrods. I hope you are doing ok in this week that is greyer than John Major’s face in a film noir. This past weekend was the first one in six months where I woke up on Saturday morning with the aim of being all healthy and going for a run and instead went ‘no fuck that’ and stayed in my pajamas. If I’d known just how invigorated and energised that would make me, I would never have started running in the first place. I call it my fuck you Zeus plan and I hope you can use it wisely. Right look, I usually waffle on for ages in this bit don’t I? But while I could talk for a long time about how my daughter’s Baby Shark magazine has a comic strip about Baby Shark going to the beach and needing a rubber ring for swimming which is the sort of logic that has really flummoxed me, instead let’s make this week’s show a more reasonable length than the last few. I am sorry they’ve all been so long, but I mean, you know, everything. So very quickly thank you to James, Claire, Pete, Ko-fi supporter and Joe for the ko-fi donations, and to Harriet for upping her patreon donation. Thankyou loads and loads and of course should you wish to throw your hard earned moolah my way to show your enjoyment of this shouting, then please head to the ko-fi.com/parpolbro site, join the patreon.com/parpolbro team or use the Acast supporter button which I think a woman that I don’t know says something about at the beginning of the show. I’m not sure who she is or why she cares, but I’m grateful if a tad suspicious. And obvs if you can’t do that, review the show on your podcast apps with a fat five star, and inform the world about this show or at the very least think about it hard while staring at people you don’t know and it should just transfer into their mind palaces instantaneously. That’s definitely a thing. Wow that was brief, I should really say less more often. Nothing else remotely of worth in my life to mention, so this week’s show has a chat with Chris and Rachel at Excluded UK and I warn you, not only is the interview very informative and at times moving, as they tell me all about people who are having a really shit time right now, but also I’ve used a few gags from previous episodes in the intro and I don’t care because they are good ones. You probably wouldn’t even have noticed but I can’t lie to you. Well I can, just not about things that I should lie about. More things like saying I shouted ‘no fuck that’ on Saturday but I didn’t as my daughter was nearby so I just thought it really hard, which then transferred it into Zeus’s mind palace. Which is totally a thing. There’s also a wee look at the recent Joint Committee on Human Rights report on black people, racism and human rights and before all that, a little something that one of you sent in and I thought I’d make it into this. Thanks Barry!

BARRY JINGLE

INTERVIEW WITH CHRIS AND RACHEL

No one likes being excluded, so say I with many, many school years of not being picked for the football team and many, many later years of not being invited to parties. Both things that now, in my middle aged, continue but I’m far more pleased about it. When it comes to financial support during a global pandemic it’s an even more concerning than that kid who tried to eat the ball being picked before you. Back in March the Prime Minister vowed that the government would put its arm around every worker, something that sounded a lot like a harassment case in waiting and a massive breach of social distancing. Not only that, but unsurprisingly, it also wasn’t at all true. Instead, much like the clapping for the NHS being more of a final farewell applause, the arm pretended to be a form of comfort, but it was instead a passive way of ushering many out of the door, closing the door in their face and then closing the curtains while shouting ‘sorry we’re not in’ out of the letterbox every now and then. As it stands there are around 3 million people, or 10% of the British workforce, who’ve not received any financial support at all from the government during the pandemic, not qualifying for any of the support packages or even Universal Credit. Rather than sympathise or understand that 8 months without any income whatsoever is really devastating, the Chancellor just keeps saying that they can’t save every job. Though sadly he always seems to keep his. Or that there’s not enough money to cover everyone, apart from all the money used to increase the furlough, SEISS payments, buy an app that doesn’t work and a ton of PPE that doesn’t exist. Or that its ‘too complicated’, though to be fair Sunak is the person who tweets that he’s supporting pubs while standing outside an electric appliances shop, or that people should find work in a world where there’s no work. Or that they can only save viable jobs, jobs that can work successfully, so again that discounts everyone in the cabinet. The Conservatives are all afflicted by inattentional blindness, meaning that they don’t think there’s poverty because they haven’t seen it. Or in Boris Johnson’s case, he’s been unable to see Nazanin-Zaghari Ratcliffe or any evidence she exists for four years now and only recently was unable to see Marcus Rashford’s campaign until everyone else in the universe had and wouldn’t stop pointing at it. Most of his children disappeared from his vision within seconds of their birth. I can’t work out if its because not being able to see it, gives them an alibi for not believing it, or if they’ve just hired some pals to be the official government opticians at several thousand pounds a minute, despite their only experience of eyes being what they shout to support awful policies in the commons. Those 3 million who have been completely ignored since March, are experiencing financial issues and mental health issues caused by anxiety and stress to name but some of the impact this is having on them, and yet it’s very likely that when this is all over, they’ll be asked to pay higher taxes to cover the bail out that they haven’t got in order to save the jobs of ministers who’ve ignored them. Maybe by arm around every worker, Johnson actually meant it was some sort of chokehold?

This week I spoke to Chris and Rachel at the Excluded UK campaign, a grassroots organisation supporting everyone who hasn’t been. They’ve been lobbying MPs, guiding people to funding where possible and building a community in order to really amplify their voice in the hope that at some point, Sunak might throw them some sort of lifesaver. I asked them just who the excluded are, why Universal Credit isn’t the safety net it’s meant to be, and just whether helping everyone out would be ‘too complicated’ or just too complicated for this government who get confused about what they’ve said just the day before. Here’s Rachel and Chris:

INTERVIEW WITH CHRIS AND RACHEL PART 1

And we’ll be back with Rachel and Chris in a minute but first…

MIDDLE BIT

The Human Rights Select Committee is a cross party committee of members of both the House of Lords and the House of Commons who work together to look at issues of human rights. Among their members is the brilliant Lord Dubs, a brilliant campaigner of refugee rights and also has the name of a grime artist, and also Lord Brazabon of Tara who I’m sure is a Game of Thrones character. Anyway, this week they released their report this week entitled ‘Black People, Racism and Human Rights’ which I’m sure you won’t be surprised to hear mostly said that racial inequality is rising not falling in the UK. ‘What?’ you say. ‘How could that be the case in a place that constantly swears it’s not racist while repeatedly engaging in systematic and overt racism? I know right?’ It’s a shock I tell you because if someone says their country isn’t racist it definitely isn’t, you know in the same way the the Nazis were definitely socialists because they said so in their name and Claudia Winkleman is obviously a superhero that was bitten by a radioactive mollusc. Definitely. Now there are lots of very concerning things in the report, including the rise in young black children aged 10-17 years that get stopped by the police as well as the rise in the rate of deaths during childbirth for black woman, while the rate for deaths in childbirth overall has fallen. These, and the other areas it mentions, are upsetting examples of legislation not affecting assumptions and racist biases that lead to black people having worse treatment in society and the report says that there needs to be fewer reports into racial injustice and more action to actually tackle it. There have been 8 parliamentary reports into racism and human rights since 2010, so you kind of think if reports were the key, then racism in Britain would’ve been fixed twelvty times over by now. As well as those 8, there were specific reports about the Windrush scandal, you remember when smoker face Amber Rudd made a teeny admin error and deported loads of people who had a right to live in Britain? My admin errors usually end with me sending a follow up email to say sorry at worst, whereas Amber Rudd’s led to death, poverty and her getting a Times Radio show. Ah justice. There was also Lammy report on the criminal justice system, the McGregor-Smith review on the work sector, the Angiolini review on deaths in police custody and the race disparity report in 2017 about everything. Yet racial inequality is indeed worse. So are reports the thoughts and prayers of the UK Parliament in terms of dealing with things?

Well obviously, that’s not just it, because there’s other factors including a Prime Minister who has made more racist comments than he’s had kids. And then there’s the EHRC who receive some pretty damning criticism in the Select Committee report. The Equality and Human Rights Commission is the non-departmental public body in England and Wales that is responsible for the enforcement of equality and non-discrimination laws. Well the select committee report says that the ‘EHRC has been unable to adequately provide leadership and gain trust in tackling racial inequality in the protection and promotion of human rights.’ Which is pretty brutal when you consider that that is the one job they have. This view isn’t uncommon about the EHRC, and many have had concerns about it since it was set up in 2007 by the then Labour government, amalgamating all the other equality enforcement commissions together, or as you might put it, lumping all the minorities into one easy to ignore underfunded home. Race, gender, disability are covered by the EHRC, as well as age, sexual orientations, and religion. Previously there was the Commission for Racial Equality which had a budget of £90m just to tackle race issues across the political spectrum, but in contrast the EHRC has a current budget of £17.1m to deal with everything. It’s really something when dealing with racial inequality isn’t sufficient because of budget cuts due to racial inequality. There’s also no black commissioners on the EHRC board, which seems bonkers on a board that isn’t even made up of MPs, and so has an even more vast selection of BAME representatives it could have on board. There is only one person of colour on the commission altogether which is really dodgy for a commission supposed to tackle racial inequality and that one person, Pavita Cooper, failed to declare her donations of thousands of pounds to the Conservative Party just before she was given her appointment on the board. You know, the Conservatives, the party that decide what major appointments the EHRC have. You know the party the EHRC conveniently keep refusing to do an investigation into the Islamaphobia of. Maybe it’s just not worth spending their limited budget on something most people could say is definitely there without much effort at all. It’d be like spending thousands on a report as to whether I’ve had crisps today, when there’s clearly crisps round my mouth and on my jumper and I’ll happily tell everyone I know that I’ve had some crisps while looking for more crisps.

This week, the EHRC released their second major report in the last few weeks, following the one into anti-Semitism in Labour. The Commission looked into unequal pay in the BBC and surprisingly concluded that there was no discrimination against woman. But they did only examining 10 cases and none of them cases were ones where the BBC were forced to make pay outs to women who had made complaints about their wages being much lower than male colleagues. Again it’s like doing a study into whether or not I’ve had crisps by only looking at someone I don’t know who doesn’t like crisps and hasn’t heard of crisps. Former journalist Carrie Grace, who won back pay and an apology in 2018 after resigning as BBC China editor when Grace realised she was getting loads less than her male colleagues, said that the report was a whitewash. Much like many of the EHRC’s racial inequality efforts then.

So, as you’ve probably guessed, there’s unlikely to be any changes to any of this while this government are in charge. Or based on the current Labour dismissal of complaints from BAME members of racism within the party, if they were in charge either. Hopefully the report will keep the conversation in the news, and maybe just maybe there’ll either be an independent group who will be able to enable action within parliament and beyond, or the EHRC will be reformed to actually work. But it’s a big, unlikely hope and there’s honestly more chance of Claudia Winkleman stepping in, firing seaweed and shells at all offenders till they stop before accidentally being eaten by someone at the seaside.

And now back to Chris and Rachel…

INTERVIEW WITH CHRIS AND RACHEL PART 2

Thanks to Chris and Rachel for having time to talk to me and I really hope that some support for all those who’ve been excluded very soon. If you are in the same abandoned ship, or would like to support the campaign, then head to excludeduk.org, and they are @excludeduk on Twitter and Facebook.

Who else to get on the show? I’m still very keen to get a more diverse selection of interviewees if I can, but do send over all suggestions to them usual places of @parpolbro on Twitter, the Partly Political Broadcast facebook group, the contact page at partlypoliticalbroadcast.co.uk or just email me at partlypoliticalbroadcast@gmail.com. Or you can scrawl their name across your box of belongings that you definitely would naturally have as you resign from a job you’ve definitely wanted to leave, so that photographers who just happen to be nearby see you carry it out, and I see the name in all the pictures. Except I’ll assume that’s what’s in the contents of the box, you’ve gone all John Doe in Seven and call the police. As always, it’s probably just best to email isn’t it?

END

And that’s all on this week’s Partly Political Broadcast podcast. Thank you for listening and oh wait….what’s that trundling over the hill? That’s right, a PARPOLBROHOTPOLGOSSFACT. What with old DomCum fucking off even it wasn’t for all the reasons he should’ve fucked off for ages ago, what was the best UK political resignation ever? In at 3^rd place is Lord Antony Lampton, who looked unbelievably like a mad scientist villain from a 50s comic book, and was a Conservative MP from the 40s to the early 70s. That is until he was victim of the first ever tabloid stitch up where he was filmed in bed smoking a joint with a naked prostitute, all caught on a camera hidden inside a small teddy bear. That is not an option I knew they had at Build-A-Bear. Lambton couldn’t believe people were disgusted by his behaviour because he hadn’t realised it was 1973 and not nowadays when everyone would just think ‘he’s acting Prime Ministerial isn’t he?’ Instead, Lord Inappropriate Tone said to one interviewer ‘surely all men frequent whores?’ and it is nice to hear of a Tory spending money to fuck themselves for once instead of the country. He then quit his job, moved to Tuscany and became known for legendary parties and was regularly referred to as the King of Chiantishire’ which I assume was a mis-pronunciation. In at number two is the famous story of John Profumo, a Conservative MP looking like a face drawn on an egg, and who was forced to resign after he lied to the Commons about his relationship with a former call girl who was also two timing him with a Russian spy. Maybe she was just working towards averting the future cold war by getting all sides to come together. Arf. Anyway, it led to a decade of political gossip leading all the front pages, and the downfall of the MacMillan government. The best bit involved a judge asking a minister to have his penis measured so they could work out if he was the headless man being fellated by the Duchess of Argyll in a photo in one of the papers. Of course, if they were headless, that may explain why the Duchess was kindly providing them with some. In at number 1 in this very lewd PARPOLBROHOTPOLLGOSSFACT so far, is former Labour Minister John Stonehouse looking very much like he ran a chintz store, but in reality, was in serious credit trouble, having an affair and trying to hide his past a Czech spy. So, he just faked his own death in 1974, as you do. He left all his clothes and passport on a bench on Miami beach, leading the papers to think he’d been eaten by sharks even though I’d have gone for turned invisible or shrunk down really small. Amazing how unimaginative they could be. The Commons had a minute of silence for him, while he was in Hawaii having a lovely time. He was found later the same year in Australia, having been mistaken for Lord Lucan, and return to the UK, where he still stayed as an MP because having been dead, he’d finally have fitted right in with most of the ghouls already in there. I’m pretty sure he was just abiding by DWP policy. Stonehouse didn’t actually resign until he was sentenced for fraud two years later and in many ways it’s sad he did as with that ability to barefaced lie he was perfectly qualified for government. That’s this week’s PARPOLBROHOTPOLGOSSFACT and if you enjoyed it or any few seconds of this show, even the adverts, then please do tell everyone who’s ever existed, alive or fake dead and hiding in Hawaii, to tune in and subscribe. If you can, please bung a pound to the ko-fi, Patreon or Acast supporter sites and give the show a nice sparkly 5 star review on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Acast, Castbox or graffiti’d across your neighbour’s wall. No they won’t mind. They’ll love it. Promise.

Cheers big ears to Acast, my brother The Last Skeptik, Kat Day and Katie Coxall.

This will be back next week when Boris Johnson announces an extension to his own self-isolation, ensuring that it will continue till at least the Christmas break before not returning in January and ministers having to nervously keep saying that he’s doing great while people keep putting photos on social media of a man who looks like Boris Johnson in South America constantly trying to eat or shag things.

BYEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

This week’s show was sponsored by Cummings Clever Bantz Guide: Nicknames Special, a surefire way to find the best bantz about those who say mean things about you like ‘grow up’ and ‘don’t eat that you’ll choke’. Got a sister? Why not call her, er ‘stinky sister sister’ yeah that’s really imaginative yeah. Or er, want to insult Steve? What about, er ‘Captain Steve Poo’ yeah. That’ll really get him. Find Cummings Clever Bantz Guide: Nicknames Special. For geniuses aged 5 to 9 years of age.

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