Making The Same Mistake Twice – Even More Tiers, Priti Much A Bully, Green Industrial Revolution and activist Urszula Kuczyńska on Polish politics

Released on Tuesday, November 24th, 2020.

Making The Same Mistake Twice – Even More Tiers, Priti Much A Bully, Green Industrial Revolution and activist Urszula Kuczyńska on Polish politics

Don’t worry! The government has saved Christmas, you know in a Munchausen by proxy type way. But you’ll be able to share your COVID with all your relatives on December 25th because it is the season for giving after all. Aside from those few days though, we’re back to tiers, meanwhile Priti Patel has been causing tears, and Boris Johnson has new green industrial revolution plan that won’t work for years. Plus Tiernan talks to Polish activist Urszula Kuczyńska (@urszulakuczynsk) about the Women’s Strikes and politics in Poland.

Notes From Poland: https://notesfrompoland.com/

JOIN PENFOLD AND GET ME MONEY THANKS: www.getpenfold.com/refer/tiernan

PLEASE HELP TIERNAN SURVIVE ALL OF THE COMEDY BEING CANCELLED:

Donate to the Patreon at www.patreon.com/parpolbro

Buy me a coffee at https://ko-fi.com/parpolbro

OR FIND THE ACAST SUPPORTER BUTTON WHEREVER IT IS

USUAL PODCAST CLACK:

LOOK AT TIERNAN’S FANCY NEW WEBSITE AND SIGN UP TO THE MAILING LIST: www.tiernandouieb.co.uk/

Follow us on Twitter @parpolbro, on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/groups/ParPolBro/ and the fancy webpage at http://www.partlypoliticalbroadcast.co.uk

Music by The Last Skeptik (@thelastskeptik) – https://www.thelastskeptik.com/ – Subscribe to his podcast Thanks For Trying here.

THIS EPISODE IS TAGGED WITH: • Ministerial Code, No Deal, parliament, Patreon, podcast, Poland, Polish government, political, politics, PPE, Priti Patel, Rishi Sunak, satire, self isolation, Spending Review, squeeze the disease, stand-up, The Last Skeptik, Tiernan Douieb, Tiers, Urszula Kuczyńska, virus, Women's Strike, Wypierdalac

Transcript

Ep212

Hello and welcome to the Partly Political Broadcast, the podcast that is unintentionally both comedy and politics. I’m Tiernan Douieb and this week the Prime Minister and wow Douglas the Lurpak Butter Man has had a tough few years Boris Johnson has announced coronavirus restrictions will allow families to meet for a week from 22^nd to 28^th December, which is a shame as now everyone’s grandparents will know what they’re getting for Christmas.

Hooray the government have saved Christmas everyone! You know in a sort of Munchausen’s syndrome by proxy way. We all know they could’ve saved Christmas back in April with correct coronavirus prevention methods, but that’s not as fun is it? This way is far more Hollywood action hero like. Not being able to save everyone, letting all the celebrations white people don’t understand die first, and then at the very last-minute swooping into the rescue whilst hoping no one notices the massive amount of destruction around you. It doesn’t matter that Christmas may be covered in bruises and bandages and you can’t visit your relatives as they didn’t make it past June, what matters is that they won’t be the government that cancelled Christmas. Meaning that everything will be normal again and we can all go back to saying Communists or Muslims are trying to ruin Christmas instead, by calling it Inclusionary Winter Bumfest day or something, because a newspaper that lies said so, so it must be true. Yeah, take that Grinch! Boris Johnson is better than you. Well except that the Grinch didn’t let over 50,000 people die unnecessarily, and at the end his heart grew three times bigger which means he had one to begin with. So, I still think it’s one nil to the Grinch. We always knew the month of lockdown would end in tiers, so the government has made sure of that by returning to the three-tier system we had before lockdown but you different to the one you already weren’t sure of, because the only consistency this government are able to have is the Prime Minister’s general mass looking like semolina poured out of a cement mixer.

A three-tier plan, like the one that didn’t stop a rise in infections last time and forced us into a lockdown? Sounds like a great way to stop a rise in infections and insure we don’t go into a lockdown. Still ‘gleefully making the same mistake twice’ does sound like a good party slogan. Coronavirus cases are dropping except in school aged children and by people catching it in supermarkets because every little helps right? But with the new restrictions meaning non-essential shops and gyms can re-open, it’ll take pressure off schools and Sainsburys by allowing people to catch it elsewhere instead. Johnson announced the new measures in the Commons via zoom while still self-isolating in Number 10, but before MPs could ask him questions, the sound on his feed completely cut out in the perfect amalgamation of 2020 themes. It was also the most clear and honest replies he’s given to date. In his address to the nation that evening, where sadly he could be heard, Johnson said there will be new and exciting possibilities of community testing, and it suppose after being stuck in lockdown, it will be exciting to have to drive hundreds of miles to a new community just to get one. Get a test to help us squeeze the disease was one of Johnson’s new catchphrases, his entire personality now reduced down to a drivetime radio DJ on poppers, before he churned out ‘tis the season to be jolly, but it’s also the season to be jolly careful’ which I think may be one of the worst things anyone has ever said. I feel like the last few weeks of this year are going to be him repeating things that haven’t worked from within a Number 10 cupboard, with more and more awful taglines before he gives up and shouts ‘you can’t stop a cornpopper popping his corn’ as the feed freezes on an image of him trying to shag the podium.

These measures are all necessary to save the economy, as Chancellor and the Marks and Spencer Fonz Rishi Sunak is doing his 7 billionth spending review this week, where he’ll warn of an economic shock, something that likely won’t affect him in anyway despite Sunak not being remotely grounded. Instead, public sector workers are being told they’ll have to bear a pay freeze, but not for doctors and nurses as they’ve been pivotal to tackling the virus meaning their reward is the shit pay they already had. Teachers however, will be hit as the government is keen to educate them that teaching children through a pandemic and dealing with insufficient safety measures isn’t as worthy of masses of cash as making an app that doesn’t work or selling poor quality PPE. The government are pledging £16.5bn for defence though and the cash will be used for an agency dedicated to artificial intelligence, hopefully to make up for the lack of biological intelligence in the cabinet, and a space command because post-Brexit we’re going to have to travel further to find anyone willing to trade with us. ‘Modernising the armed forces extends British influence’ according the Prime Minister, which I think just means soldiers will now have higher quality cameras to film their illegal torture videos on when restoring democracy to somewhere that has a more humanitarian government than we do.

So that’s where teachers have gone wrong all this time. And to think how many of them would have had an easier time teaching classes if they’d just carried massive guns. If only hospital staff had thought to bomb the virus. Sunak has promised he will reddress the anti-Northern spending bias by creating more public sector jobs in the northern England, so they can all have their pay frozen like everyone else. The Chancellor insists that people will not see austerity, which suggests that he’ll just do it when no one’s looking. But this is all ok because there will be a week of Christmas where we can all mingle with loved ones during the 10 days Coronavirus will be having its seasonal break after a big office party the Friday before where it’ll make cheeky copies of its own cells and won’t even bother using mistletoe as an excuse to jump down someone’s throat. Scientists have said there will be a cost to families getting together over Christmas, but that is true of every Christmas to be fair. Its fucking expensive. At least this way, there’ll be less presents to buy for future years. All the UK nations have backed household mixing for a small number of days, because I guess they think it’s more important to embrace the season for giving.

It is of no surprise that the government think that its most important that the last sound your nan may hear before the beeps of the ICE, is a fart like a whale noise to the backdrop of the Mrs Brown’s Boys Christmas special, or that shooting first is more important than ever asking anyone any questions. Or answering them. These are the values of politicians whose moral code is based entirely on how much you’ve paid for it. Take the Home Secretary because that’s what she does to other people, sorry I mean, Kim Harsh from Liberty Negs Priti Patel, who was found to have breached ministerial code for bullying staff, something that she’d just say was her workshopping her methods of making criminals and anyone foreign feel terror before taking them on the road. What? Priti Patel a workplace bully? Yeah, I know, I’m shocked too. I’d have never have guessed from literally everything else she’s ever said and done that all revolved around punishing others for escaping violence or wanting equal rights or to breath in the future were just several character one offs that all happened to keep happening. The Cabinet Office inquiry found that Patel had not been treating civil servants with the consideration and respect required under the code, but the government insisted that actually Patel was responsible only for ‘unintentional bullying’. Yes No.10 are so shit they can’t even bully on purpose. Johnson got MPs to rally around Patel, referring to her in a WhatsApp as the Prittster, a name that makes her sound like a supervillain who threatens lawyers and demands three hundred thousand and thirty four, nine hundred and seventy four thousand dollars ransom. Many online said it sounded like a type of glue, but that doesn’t work as nothing seems to stick to Patel at all.

So with this, the Home Secretary gave a half-hearted response saying she was sorry that her behaviour in the past has upset people, which is a mealy mouthed way of screaming ‘I AM SORRY YOU ARE ALL WEAKLINGS WHO HAVE FEELINGS BUT I DID TRY TO BEAT THEM OUT OF YOU.’ Johnson insisted there was no place for bullying, before refusing to sack the Home Secretary, so it’s likely that finding a place specifically for bullying will be her next assignment from the PM. Senior Civil Servant and Batman’s butler Sir Alex Allan resigned as Johnson’s independent advisor on ministerial code, as well, what’s the fucking point? You may as well be Johnson’s independent advisor on not putting his penis into kitchen implements. You shout about the dangers of the toaster all you like but you and I know at the end of the day he’ll just do what he likes. Here’s the thing, bullying staff is only bullying staff when someone like former speaker and constant badger John Bercow does it, because he got in the way of government plans. When Patel does it, it’s not bullying, it’s just being tough and assertive, in that she’s asserted that certain people need to be bullied and its tough if they don’t like it. The report that condemned Patel’s behaviour has actually been with Johnson’s office since April, but it was only revealed to the public last Thursday, in the midst of anti-bullying week. Now we may all call into question if government incompetence could be any more ridiculous and self-defeating but maybe Johnson just believed that by defending a bully who was being criticised, he was therefore showing no one should be bullied, even bullies. A message that would work if this was a lovely movie where Patel would now turn over a new leaf and become a kind-hearted volunteer for a refugee charity, but in reality, she’ll just keep doing that grin when she hears someone’s drowned and try her best to get black people arrested. Rumours are flying around that she’ll be demoted in Johnson’s upcoming reshuffle, but not because of the bullying accusations, just because of incompetence. You see Johnson’s realised he needs a home secretary who is even better at bullying and won’t get caught. It’s basically the job description for that department. Meanwhile I’m sure Patel will go to somewhere like the DWP where she can spend her days excelling at kicking people’s walking sticks away while telling them to get jobs as draft excluders.

Labour leader and square head protractor Keir Starmer said that it was hard to imagine another workplace in the UK where Patel’s behaviour would be condoned, which shows how unimaginative he is because he’s still ignoring the report about racial abuse and bullying within his party with still no date for the Forde Inquiry to be released. Though let’s be fair, by ignoring it, he’s not condoning it, Starmer’s just abstaining and I’m sure he thinks that’s enough. To be fair, Starmer’s been busy playing political hokey cokey all week, as after former leader and borlotti bean Jeremy Corbyn was suspended from the party, he was then reinstated before having the whip removed the same day. Which means Corbyn is still in Labour and still and MP, but not a Labour MP, which I think now makes him basically the same as many members of the party who spent the past 4 years making sure they’d lose elections. The National Executive Committee ruled to readmit him as it’s not a decision for the leadership office and by tampering with disciplinaries Starmer could actually be in breach of the EHRC report himself but on Corbyn’s readmittance Starmer insisted there’d be a three-month suspension from the PLP. Which if anything just means Corbyn can oppose Labour policies like he did for most of his MP career and won’t attend any of the PLP meetings making Starmer think he’s abstaining and therefore taking decisive action. The Labour leader said he didn’t want to cause a split in the party, which is ok, he didn’t, it’s been there for at least 10 years. Nearly 60,000 party members have left since the kerfuffle and Unite The Union are talking about withdrawing funding, but it should be ok as Starmer will be able to get it back from all the arms dealers that used to support them who’ve since started donating to the party again from August. I’m sure Starmer will be very forensic about which ones he works with and 100% stand up to any who supply illegal wars by not letting them know, staying at home and assuming they’ll get the message.

In other news, Boris Johnson has announced his Green Industrial Revolution thought it’s not known if that’s green as in climate friendly or in terms of all the cash he’ll be fobbing off to his mates for ineffective projects. Either way the only revolution that’s likely to happen is the government’s about turn on every single one of the policies they’ve pledged. Johnson got in trouble earlier in the week for allegedly saying that devolution had been a disaster in Scotland, but many Scottish people incorrectly took it as an insult when in fact it’s a compliment coming from the main disaster in England himself. Brexit talks have stalled after a member of your old head teacher who always looked like he’d just woken up Michael Barnier’s negotiating team, tested positive for COVID. Still it’s nice to see we’ve added more to the list of things we’re willing to export to the EU.

In COVID news, dazed hamster Dido Harding was told by the NHS app to self-isolate, and its depressing that it’s up to her own app to straight up ask her to reveal her contacts, when none of the major press can be bothered. It was revealed a Spanish businessman bagged $21m for being the go-between for a government bid for PPE, despite him mainly finding manufacturers for deals that had already been done. Not only is that a terrible waste of money but if someone goes between PPE and NHS staff it entirely ruins the point of them. Yet again the government have spent tons of money on things that are merely middling. Lastly, the Oxford University Vaccine is said to be 70% successful, which is likely to have not got it a place at the university had it applied. Still anyone who takes it will automatically get a master vaccine too, and be connected will all the best cures in the country, though sadly it’s unlikely to be handed out to anyone who went to a state school.

ADMIN

Hey hey hey hey. How’s you ParPolBroers? I hope you are doing all fine and dandy in yet another week of lockdown. I’m not saying this year has made me less sympathetic to others needs, but our daughter’s nursery had to close end of last week as a staff member tested positive for COVID and my first thoughts were not ‘I hope that person is ok’ but more ‘oh shit, I’ll actually have to look after my daughter all of next week, how fucking inconsiderate.’ Awful. But so is the lack of nursery this week and having to spend every single day trying to figure out how I stop my daughter crying because she doesn’t want to eat the sandwich she just asked for and is now inconsolable. Two-year olds are such dicks. Anyway, because of that, this admin bit is not very long and also today is my wife’s birthday and as if a lockdown birthday wasn’t bad enough, she has to be on childcare while I do this, so needless to say I have failed on the present front. It’s like I bought her an escape room experience but where she can’t escape and all the clues as to why there is endless whining don’t make any sense and will never be figured out. So very quickly, in order to save her from that, thanks tons and tons to James for his lovely email about last week’s episode with the Excluded UK team and upping his Patreon donation and to Claire for joining the Patreon crew, you goddamn heroes. Also, ta tons to Daznrach, Conal, Taz and ko-fi supporter for the ko-fi donations too. Should you also think I am deserving of your funds, or you want to pay me shedloads to just quit this show and have a sleep, then you can do either of those things at the patreon.com/parpolbro, the ko-fi.com/parpolbro site or the Acast supporter button on the Acast app. I’m not sure how much would be reasonable for me to just stop doing this show but honestly, it’ll be less than you think. As always, if you can’t donate, or even if you can, I’d just bloomin’ love it if you gave this show a nice review on any of the podcast apps that do reviews, particularly Apple Podcasts as that’s the biggest one innit? A lovely 5 star and your favourite swear as a review would be so appreciated as it does help drag more unsuspecting listeners in so they too can hear me wang on about reviews and donations every bloody week like a shit parrot. Of course, any plugging of this show to the people you know would also put you in my good books. As in, the books I like reading. I haven’t got a book of names, I’ll just do a squiggle in whatever I read last and didn’t hate. Which might ruin my kindle but it’s worth it.

No other bussy ness this week, but as well as the aforementioned James sending a nice email about last week’s show, several of you tweeted, Facebooked and sent smoke signals saying you were moved by last week’s interview and I forwarded many of them onto Chris and Rachel who were really touched by the support, so thank you tons for that. On this week’s show I am speaking to Polish activist Urszula Kuczynska about the political horrors over in Central Europe and there is also a longer than is necessary look about the ten-point Green Industrial Revolution announced by Johnson last week but if you can’t be bothered to listen to that, just assume what a climate change tackling plan would be like from him and you’ll be exactly right. Yep, best prepare and buy your swimming gear now.

INTERVIEW WITH URSZULA

Poland is a country we don’t hear about on the news in the UK very often, perhaps because it’d be too embarrassing to report on a country suffering from populist leadership, where loads of citizens have recently returned home from the UK because things here were worse.

Except actually they aren’t, as Poland is one of the OG populism embracers, you know before it was uncool, and like all trendsetters, they’ve taken it beyond its natural form, added extra church influence and are now in full on Handmaid’s Tale level of scary. The country that geographically is in the centre of Europe but is straying towards the far right of politics, has just recently had a near total ban on abortion pushed through by the government as the latest in a long line of very worrying policies that most recently include blocking EU help for COVID hit areas, doing nothing to tackle the dirtiest energy production in Europe, doing nothing to stop far right movements, taken over state media and they’re now trying to push through a bill to ban all LGBT+ celebrations like Pride. One of the more positive stereotypes Brits have of Polish people is that they’re very hard workers and rarely take breaks, but that is definitely not a good thing when the Polish government puts that work ethic into work no one wanted done. The Law and Justice party, or Prawo I Sprawiedliwość (Pravo e sprevidevoscht), in yet another party where it turns out their name are all the things they don’t like, got into power in 2015 with the first outright majority since the fall of Communism, on the platform of tackling corruption but also liberal democracy because who wants that when you can not have any fun instead? Yet surprise surprise, the party has been rife with corruption and nepotism ever since, with over 1000 family members and friends of the party placed into public companies or Ministries. Which as well as being a horrific power grab and very dodgy, also makes you wonder what kind of sickos actively want to work with their family members? Weird. They have been paying trolls to cause anger online, hiding paedophiles in the Catholic church and helping them escape prosecution and there is evidence of some high-ranking members of the party having connections with the mafia. Basically, it’s like a whole party of Trumps, which would be the very worst sort of party though on the plus side they’d be so self absorbed they wouldn’t notice if you left early. In recent weeks though, the abortion ban seems to have been the final straw for many Polish citizens and thousands and thousands have taken to the streets as part of a Women’s Strike, which as the brilliant tagline of ‘Wypierdalac’ (vipier-dalai) which translated means ‘get the fuck out’. A line that both works in terms of orders for the government and also shows a strong pro-abortion sentiment. The Law and Justice party’s popularity is rapidly dropping, and it feels like things may be about to change. So when it feels like the UK is just a few steps behind, what better time to look over at Poland and take heed of what may come. Though let’s be fair, we might be saved by the fact that Boris Johnson takes far too many breaks.

This week I spoke to the brilliant Urszula Kuczyńska, an activist in Poland who has been vert involved in the Warsaw Women’s Strike, co-founded a trade union, works with humanitarian organisations and is part of Lewica Razem, an extra parliamentary club of left wing politcians working together to promote equality for all. Yes, she sounds awesome and very much is. I have no idea how she had time to give me a 101 on Polish politics right now, but she did, while a large cat called Grendal sat on her lap throughout. This is not only an important listen because of Poland’s future but also if I played a beep sound effect every time you hear echoes of UK politics right now, this interview would sound like R2D2 having a seizure. Also, I don’t give this credit enough in the interview, but Urszula says the phrase ‘they absolutely lost their shoes and are walking barefoot right now’ and I would like this phrase to be in the British vernacular. Thank you. Enjoy, here is Urszula:

INTERVIEW WITH URSZULA PART 1:

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

MIDDLE BIT

One of the questions that popped up repeatedly during the 2019 general election campaign, was why haven’t the Conservatives costed their manifesto? It turns out that the answer, as we can see again this week, is because they let Labour cost theirs, then planned to just nick all their ideas but do them much worser which should save a bit of cash so they can give it to a pal instead. This week Boris Johnson announced a ten-point Green Industrial Revolution plan, which sounds like it might be referring to the manoeuvres he’ll be doing when he u-turns out of all of it, but actually sounds more like the Green Industrial Revolution plan from Labour’s 2019 manifesto, but with less points to it. That’s not to say it’s terrible, because it’s something. Which in Conservative lore means it’s not nothing, which is what they had before this and therefore means they are doing the minimal amount towards tackling climate change while also putting someone who likes fracking in charge of the climate change conference in Glasgow next year. Sure, that could be the beginning of an amazing retribution film a la Dangerous Minds, where a climate change denier gets a job working with people who are trying to stop it and buy the end has them all winning the schools musical competition with some nuns. No wait, I’ve got confused. I’m just saying that once again, this might sound all nice if you read the name of Johnson’s plan and then go to bed and never ever look at it ever again, but otherwise, there’s more glaring omissions than ways to tackle emissions. And here, for your enjoyment. No wait, what’s the other word I mean? Yes, sorry despair. Here for your despair is just what I’m a talking about.

Big pledge 1 is to produce enough offshore wind to power every home, supporting 60k jobs and quadrupling what we produce by 2030. Now you might immediately think, how can Johnson promise to produce enough wind? I mean listen to him. See? Exactly. Actually, offshore wind has dropped in price in recent years though I’m not sure how as it’s wind and you can often have it for free, by, you know, going outside. Regardless of how capitalism has managed to charge for wind, windfarm construction is booming but the UK’s electricity grid doesn’t have the capacity to deal with a vast increase in energy from those giant whirring metal flowers. Not only that but there’s concern that in rushing to build loads of wind farms, construction will damage other wildlife & marine conservation areas because there is absolutely no way the government will think that through and will no way figure out that the increase in flying squirrels is directly their fault. Unsurprisingly another worry is that contracts will be given to overseas companies for all of this meaning the UK won’t even be able to blow its own trumpet about green profits, let alone its wind farms, especially as old swole face David Cameron brought in reforms that stopped us building any in England. Obviously there’s been no elaboration on any of those concerns from the government, so it’s very likely this policy will be like a candle in the er…yeah you get it. Write your own jokes.

Number 2 is all about hydrogen and using it loads to eventually have a whole town powered entirely by it by the end of the decade, except the main source of hydrogen is as a side ting from gas extraction meaning for more hydrogen, you gotta frack on down. More fracking would mean more environmental disruption which along with the potential acres of turbines stuffed on top of endangered whales is a really interesting way of problem solving, by just creating a different equally shit problem. I wouldn’t put it past this government to create more recreational space for kids by letting them legally play on train tracks, or find a new way to properly fireproof all buildings by using asbestos.

Number 3 is about using more nuclear energy, and if you’ve watched the TV series Chernobyl you’ll probably have ideas as to why letting a government that couldn’t even make an app that works be in charge of nuclear radiation would be a bad idea. Actually, though the main issue is cost. Hinkley point is the only nuclear power plant that anyone’s building in the UK right now and that’s been subject to so many problems that when it’s built, it’ll be the most expensive power source in the country. To afford any more would mean massive rising electricity bills for everyone to cover it. Two further power plants were meant to be in Wales and Suffolk but the former was abandoned by Hitachi and now doesn’t look like it’ll be happening and the latter is under review. So basically, it’s not how the nuclear energy reacts that’s the problem as to whether this is viable right now, it’s how the economy does.

Point 4 is about electric vehicles and the plan is to phase out all new petrol and diesel cars by 2030 so it’ll only be plug ones manufactured after that which is exciting as I’ve always wanted to drive a real life scalectric. This is a good thing but again, there’s no detail as to who will cover the infrastructure to make this happen. Car companies are going to be in financial trouble post-Brexit if there’s no good deal, electric cars will be too costly for many to buy unless there’s government backing to reduce costs and there’s also no info on how big fat trucks and lorries will be made electric or how charging points will be built everywhere or if I will be able to use my scalectric remote to control someone else’s cars and if I press the button too hard will they fly off the track?

Five is improving public transport so less people will be reliable on the cars they’ve spent lots of money on making electric. This is again a great policy, but firstly COVID gotta do one so people aren’t afraid of the trains anymore, lots more money needs to be invested in cycle friendly measures and not just investing in more cranks and rubbish spokespeople. Yeah, those are rubbish puns but then you do your own losers. Seriously.

Six is all about aviation and maritime. No not making weddings more sustainable, but boats and that. Johnson says they’ll help make those difficult to go green industries somehow make the leap and fund projects to make zero emission planes. Really big paper ones maybe? Most emissions from flights are by a handful of regular plane takers rather than holidaymakers so a tax on frequent flying would probably help, which is why of course the government aren’t keen on doing it. The shipping industry seems reluctant to reduce emissions but I guess why would it? More emissions mean eventually more sea and they’ve seen Waterworld and want to become kings. I see you maritime crew. I see you.

Making homes and public buildings more energy efficient is numero seven, with an aim to install 600,000 heat pumps to replace gas boilers every year by 2028. This will of course be made easier by the likelihood councils will have had to sell off all public buildings by then to stay afloat, so that’s one thing the government won’t have to worry about. The Green Homes Grant to help people insulate their homes better and make them less planet fuckery, runs out end of March 2021, so they might want to keep that going if anyone’s gonna do it. Similarly heat pumps can cost £10k so no one’s going to want to fork out for that when they could just put an extra jumper on instead. The UK has some of the least energy efficient homes in the world, so this is a key one to get to any climate tackling targets. They’ll also need to build better newer homes too, and not just ones for Housing Minister and conceited jelly Robert Jenrick to own.

Eight is all about carbon capturing and storing harmful emissions but obviously the problem is that Priti Patel wants to detain them indefinitely. No, really this is needed too, and we’d have done it ages ago if all the funding wasn’t scrapped during austerity times. So now of course it’ll cost loads to do and no one will want to pay for it and chances are high we’ll all be told that public sector workers will have to inhale a certain amount of carbon a day to be true heroes or something and there’ll be a weekly round of applause for anyone who stores the most inside themselves.

Nine is about preserving nature and planting lots of trees, which the Conservative government has failed to meet any targets on so far, the government’s conservation watchdog Natural England has been cut to crap and all its staff are underpaid. Plus, it looks like post-Brexit environment regulations will mean all land is up for grabs, not including all the places that will be fracked to smithereens or have a wind farm slammed into it. So, there’s every chance that by ‘preserving nature’ they mean keeping things sorted for all their pals that were born into money and therefore somehow biologically deserve it.

And lastly is innovation and finance which is about developing green tech and making the City of London the centre of green finance, which again is a good thing if the government backing is in place to invest in all these things. The Green Investment Bank from a few years ago was sold off to an Australian firm who didn’t make any green investments, and everyone lost money. Also, Brexit & COVID recovery may or may not affect the idea of the City of London being anything other than a weird ghost town where tourists go to see the last remnants of Pret A Manger and what it was like when people had to go to meetings wearing trousers.

Those are the ten points which now don’t include previously mentioned plans to guarantee a stop to funding fossil fuels projects overseas, or a ban on new gas boilers from 2023. So as always this is not enough to do much, but it is enough to say they’re doing something at all. But really the only thing that’s green about this is how naïve anyone is to think Johnson might actually do any of it successfully.

And now back to Urszula…

INTERVIEW WITH URSZULA PART 2

Thanks so much to Urszula for having time to talk. You can find her on Twitter @UrszulaKuczynsk which yes, I will put in the podcast blurb so you can click on it and don’t have to try to spell it. Urszula writes lots of online blogs and posts but obviously they are all in Polish so best just to seek them out using your browser’s translator if you, like me, need them in English. Notes From Poland, which Urszula recommends was a genuinely useful resource when researching what to ask her, as was politicalcritique.org and oko.press which are all worth checking out. Huge thanks to Chris Tazwell for putting me in touch with Urszula as that was a really fascinating and I think useful chat to have.

Only a few more episodes of the year left, so what else does this podcast need to cover in a year where there have been so many big issues, like, er, coronavirus, coronavirus, populism and coronavirus? What have I missed? Drop me a line @parpolbro on Twitter, the Partly Political Broadcast facebook page, the contact page at partlypoliticalbroadcast.co.uk or email me at partlypoliticalbroadcast@gmail.com. Or just bully someone into doing it but insist you didn’t mean to especially all the bullying you did on purpose and I’ll definitely interview them if only to give them an hour away from your bullying where all we’ll discuss is how much of a bully you are, and everyone will hate you even if you get a fancy new job in the home office. As always, it’s probably just best to email isn’t it?

END BIT

And that’s all for this week’s Partly Political Broadcast podcast, which means it’s time for the PARPOLBROHOTPOLGOSSFACT! This week with the Home Secretary’s behaviour being found to breach ministerial code, but what is the worst breach of code by an MP? In at number 3 is of course Disgraced MP Liam The Disgrace Fox who breached code one of his two times by taking his pal and old Punch cartoon Adam Werrity on 18 foreign trips where Werrity handed out cards to the political contacts Fox met, saying he was an adviser. In what? How to scam free holidays off the government by having a pal with no ethics? No wonder Fox thought post-Brexit trade would be easy when he was always allowed to bring a pal for free wherever he went. In at number 2 is rejected Toby Jug Damien Green who had to resign after it was found he had made misleading statements about porn found on his computer in 2008. Not that he had the porn you understand, or the sexual harassment cases against him, but just that he’d said he didn’t have any porn on his computer which means none of the other MPs got to have a look at it and that’s bang out of order because they all love seeing people get screwed and exploited. And in at number 1, yes it’s Priti Patel for the first time she breached ministerial code, as international development secretary in 2017, when she had unauthorised meetings with Israeli government officials while she was meant to be on holiday. I suppose none of us should be surprised that Patel’s way of relaxing is to secretly meet with those who also get off on hostile borders, but it really is remarkable that she’s now in charge of National Security after spilling government secrets with whoever she’d met by the pool that day. Yes, Patel now competes with Liam Fox for who is the most disgraced, but I’m sure she’ll be on top of the charts by the end of the year having tried to microwave a puppy in the commons kitchen or killed a staffer with a letter opener because they walked into her office without knocking. And that’s this week’s PARPOLBROHOTPOLLGOSSFACT. If you enjoyed this week’s show, or any week’s show, or even just another show that exists somewhere, then why not tell everyone to subscribe and listen to this one. Yeah, just pretend it’s this one. Insist this is about true crime really because so much of what the government are doing should be criminal so you could just sing a creepy jingle over this show and it’d basically be the same. Give us a lovely 5 star review on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Castbox or Acast and fling some cash at the ko-fi, Patreon or Acast supporter pages if you can.

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

This will be back next week when all the civil servants resign in protest of Johnson refusing to sack Priti Patel for bullying staff, and she ends up having to just pick on Dominic Raab who won’t stop crying and insisting he does karate.

BYEEEEEEEEEEEE

This week’s show was sponsored by Coronaland Gifts. Not sure what to get your loved ones this Christmas? Take a trip to Coronaland and we’ll gift wrap your mouth and nose, so that on December 25^th, relatives can excitedly unwrap your face to see what they’re gonna get! Is that for me? Oh you shouldn’t have! Make sure you don’t leave any member of your family behind when it comes to 2020 hot trends. Coronaland gifts, where we guarantee microbe is your crobe too.