Further Reading

The South African variant has hit the UK but don’t worry, it’s ok as the Prime Minister is confident the vaccines will work which means we’ll all catch it within a week. Plus quarantine hotels that don’t exist yet, Matt Hancock has seen a film and the ongoing cladding scandal. And Emily Kenway (@emilykenway) talks about her brilliant new book ‘The Truth About Modern Slavery’.

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

• • Emily Kenway on Twitter – https://twitter.com/emilykenway 
• • Emily Kenway’s website – https://www.emilykenway.com/ 
• • The Truth About Modern Slavery (book) – https://www.plutobooks.com/9780745341224/the-truth-about-modern-slavery/ 
• • Public Interest Research Centre on Twitter – https://twitter.com/pircuk 
• • Focus on Labour Exploitation on Twitter – https://twitter.com/focusonlabour 
• • Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner on Twitter – https://twitter.com/UKantislavery 
• • Reinstate the pre-2012 Overseas Domestic Worker visa with a route to settlement petition (sign here) – https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/326765 
• • Survivor Alliance on Twitter – https://twitter.com/empwrsurvivors 
• • DecrimNow on Twitter – https://twitter.com/ukdecrimnow 
• • DecrimNow Campaign website – https://decrimnow.org.uk/    

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

Ep220

INTRO

Hello and welcome to the Partly Political Broadcast podcast the comedy politics show that provides full protection against all variations and so is very successful in having rapidly falling numbers. I’m Tiernan Douieb and this week a big shout out to the British government who have successfully avoided potential snow travel chaos by continually fucking up the COVID response so badly that we’re still not allowed to go anywhere.

Big shout out this week to the Oxford Vaccine which is proving it’s definitely sovereign and British by failing to put anything in place to deal with unexpected imports. Don’t worry though as the Prime Minister and what if someone made a snowman out of blowtorched gelignite and stuck children’s fancy dress on it, Boris Johnson says the public can have confidence in it working against the South African variant. You know in the same way we were told we should shop with confidence in the midst of the pandemic last year. Or have confidence in Education Minister and drain clog Gavin Williamson not ruining all of education. Or in Home Secretary and the human version of getting a splinter right under your nail Priti Patel not being a bully or in…yeah you get what I mean, I’m just saying that on reflection, maybe we’d all be better off eating mouldy bread and hoping for the best. Obviously, you should get your vaccine and

According to Deputy Chief Medical Officer and giant baby because I mean c’mon he just definitely is a huge baby in a suit Jonathan Van Tam we really shouldn’t be concerned about the South African variant or vaccines not working against it, as much like with English politics, it seems the Kent variant will remain dominant.

according to vaccine minister and the worst egg Nadhim Zawahi even if the vaccines we’re currently using have reduced efficacy in stopping you catching it, they may reduce hospitalisation or death, meaning that the government can reopen everything asap safe in the knowledge that at worst you’ll feel as run down and awful as we all have done since 2010.

There’s definitely enough vaccine too, so don’t worry about that. The Vaccine Minister says he can see the supply week by week until the end of March, after which you’re clearly on your own again and it’s your fault for not being older.

If you’re over 70 and haven’t had your vaccine yet, you should contact the national booking service online which will probably crash by the end of the week or via phone which will probably be engaged and frankly your lack of organisation just so you can personally ruin the government’s targets is really unfair and won’t go unnoticed.  

When you do get your vaccine don’t go thinking it’ll get you any special proof of the jab though, as the government have ruled out plans for vaccine passports, probably because when combined with the new British blue ones they’ll cancel each other out in terms viable travel plans. ‘Oh, you’re vaccinated, great climb aboard. Wait, where are you from? Britain? No, sorry, get back off again.’ Perhaps it’s also to avoid confused messaging on their immigration policies. I mean the government are putting out messaging saying the vaccine jab will be free regardless of someone’s immigration status. The last thing they want to do is raise someone’s hope that they’ve got less draconian about borders, by giving them a passport when in reality they’re only pushing this, so they know you won’t infect anyone on the plane they’ll deport you on.

What the government are doing though is combining Valentine’s Day with the one-year anniversary of COVID getting it on with Britain and celebrating by surprising the virus with a romantic 10-day hotel quarantine stay. I mean, I’m sure as he’s done with all relationships, the Prime Minister is going to leave booking the rooms till the very last minute at which point there’ll only be shitty service station place off the M1 available, and Johnson will make sure anyone but him foots the bill.

So, these quarantine hotels, yeah? 10 days of being stuck in your room, all food brought to you, you’re unable to go outside except for a fag break. Where can you book for one of these? I’m asking for me and tired parents everywhere for which this sounds like a dream vacation for 2021. Sadly, the stay will only be mandatory from February the 15^th for anyone stupid enough to travel to the UK from a country on the travel ban list.

I mean why would you do that? Have you not seen or read anything ever? The only reason it might make sense for anyone to come here right now is because they’re part of Doctors Without Borders or they need inspiration for their remake of the Omega Man. This is why the UK terror threat has been lowered from severe to just substantial, because chances are if any terrorist turned up to this snow covered, post Brexit ‘rona hellscape, they’d think, ‘there’s nothing left to do here lads, they’ve got it covered.’

Quarantine hotels are though, and yep, I hate to say it, a fairly sensible idea from the government except that it’s happening almost exactly a year too late. But then I guess the chase is the fun part, right? It just wouldn’t have been as good if we didn’t give COVID a head-start first. And of course, this government are all about unleashing potential or something.

James Cleverly, a man who has the constant expression of a dog that’s just stepped on a rake and is somehow the Minister of State for the Middle East and North Africa which is the most obvious way to announce that you honestly couldn’t give a fuck what happens to a place. He got very angry in an interview when he was asked why this is only happening a year later than it should have been and responded by saying ‘well the government needed time to prepare’.

Of course, they did. I mean it probably takes hours just to get Johnson to put his shoes and jacket on, so a year – plus those few months where the Prime Minister couldn’t be bothered to attend any COBRA meetings – that definitely isn’t enough time to book a few hotels to prevent variants of a virus when they also had to learn what a virus is, what a variant is, spend hours writing policies for tier systems or slogans that had to sound like they were a bonus round on a game show, get rid of homelessness then bring it back but worse, make everyone go to restaurants and teach Johnson that people stay in hotels for more than the 30 mins he usually needs in them just to disappoint a naïve intern.

No contracts have been given to hotel chains to take part in the scheme yet so judging by the past year, it’ll be handed to whoever donates to the Conservative Party first, and somehow end up with travellers landing at Heathrow airport, before being picked up in an army truck and thrown into a makeshift shack in a car park behind Chessington World of Adventures. When asked if he knew where the next mutant strain of the virus was coming from, Cleverly answered that he didn’t know, which is unusual as you’d assume all one cell organisms that focus on ruining lives would communicate with each other.

He insisted that actually there’s no point in closing to all countries just in-case a virus happens to mutate there, as actually we in Britain are really good at finding variations once they arrive. How do we do that then? By catching then and announcing like a wine connoisseur, ‘oh this breathing difficulty has hints of Cape Town in summer and a whiff of Rio, probably, if I could smell anything’. Come on mate, the Coronavirus isn’t a new update to Pokémon Go, where we all wonder round and cough out ‘I’ve got a rare one from Outer Mongolia’ and everyone swarms there to cash in.

Maybe I’m being harsh but considering the test and trace program for months couldn’t even locate someone who you had the numbers for in your own phone, who repeatedly lose important documents leading to citizens getting deported and a prime minister who isn’t even sure where his kids are, I feel like chances are slim they’re going to be some sort of variant super-force. Saying that, they will be coming from abroad so there’s also a chance that the second they arrive Priti Patel will be able to sniff them out and put them in a detention centre within minutes.

Which actually, is probably exactly where the quarantine hotels will end up being too and least if nothing else the google reviews that should appear afterwards might highlight how badly we treat supposedly illegal migrants. ‘Well, we arrived back from a lovely two weeks in Mauritius only to be forcefully bundled into a car, and left in a building with no Wifi, no water, no toilets and forced to clean for £1 an hour. Still, it was quite the immersive experience and cheaper than Secret Cinema so two stars.’

But maybe I’m being mean. Maybe a year isn’t long enough to plan for these things. I mean Health Secretary and man who definitely tries to impress his kids by showing them he knows all the words to a rap but changes all the swears to things like ‘oopsie’ Matt Hancock, he’s only just got round to watching the 2011 film about a pandemic, Contagion, which seems to have really influenced him and sadly explains why the main plan to defeat the virus seems to be to sit around and wait for Marion Cotillard and Matt Damon to save us all.

Hancock says the film hasn’t been his primary source of advice, I mean of course not. Maybe he’s now watched Outbreak too and the next big policy will be to stop primates from flying to the UK. Obviously only from countries on the travel ban list.

Maybe he should have shown some of these films to his buddy, head of test and trace and constipated hamster Dido Harding who told the Science and Technology select committee that ‘none of us were able to predict the virus would mutate’.

Speak for yourself Dido, even I could and my only real knowledge of things that go viral is the occasional tweet I do that does well and afterwards realise it has a glaring typo and I feel haunted by it for days. She’s head of the national institute for health protection and potentially soon NHS England too and she didn’t know viruses mutate? What other areas of health is she unaware of?

Well, none of knew that once his leg fell off that he’d keep bleeding out. I had no idea that breaking your back meant you couldn’t move, I thought you’d just roll around on your bum everywhere. I guess none of us could have predicted that if the government bunged a load of cash and important jobs to their friends that they’d be really, really fucking shit at them? Life is full of endless surprises.

The government are reportedly planning a big shake-up of the NHS, which isn’t what it needs after all this. It needs a proposed cuddle and a cup of tea. The plans say that they will centralise decision-making, one source was quoted as saying that the NHS is getting a new driver. That new driver could be Matt Hancock. A sentence that would be properly terrifying for the country even if the context was about a toddler’s tricycle. It could mean that in future, Health Secretaries would be able to override NHS executive decisions. So as a comedian if we could ensure Matt Hancock watches Patch Adams at some point soon, I might get to have a lucrative career by 2023.

Meanwhile the Chancellor and animated corn cob Rishi Sunak has accused scientists of moving the goalposts on lockdown, which instantly proves he doesn’t even understand what scientists are or he wouldn’t put them in a sports-based analogy. To be fair, it must be unsettling for him to see professionals regularly change their mind based on evidence.

Hope is coming though as the Boris Johnson and the French President and weirdly old child Emmanuel Macron have been discussing a COVID-19 collaboration – yeah and you thought Infinity War was the most ambitious crossover event, but here we have two useless leaders working together to at least give their citizens hope that they may turn their attention to ruining somewhere else for an hour every afternoon.

Johnson has also said that the earliest sensible date schools should return is March 8^th, so I’m guessing they’ll return February the 22^nd, for a full day, before being closed again till 2023. Somehow the plan is still also for local elections to happen in May, which seems completely nuts till you remember that by then only the over 60s will have been overwhelmingly vaccinated and able to safely vote so the Conservatives will likely win everything. Voters will be advised to bring their own pens to vote, because that’s where we are in 2021 now, with ‘use pens’ conspiracy theorists being the key to holding up democracy.

Of course, the news that dominated headlines this past week was the death of Captain Tom Moore, a 100-year-old man that raised a lot of money for the NHS which is probably why the Conservatives were so desperate to clap when he died, as it must be annoying to put all the effort in to dismantle an institution then this old dude props it back up.

The Prime Minister insisted that everyone stand on their doorsteps at 6pm and clap for Captain Tom, an unlikely icon who became a symbol of the last year in that he was an elderly person who was able to do laps in Spring but died of COVID 10 months later because our government are terrible.

It is odd that Johnson either wants to clap people his government are sending to their death, or after they’ve died, as though he thinks it’ll work like the Tinkerbell Effect. Actually, that can’t be it, as it’d require him to believe in something.

There is no greater way to remember someone doing something remarkable than by weaponizing their death to distract from you having done something consistently shit. Johnson said we should all channel Captain Tom’s spirit, which makes it sound like we needed a Ouija board, but probably actually means that he’s about to announce that the NHS will now be funded by 100-year-olds having to run around.

In other news, there is anger at Cabinet Office Secretary and walking teratoma Michael Gove who ignored all warnings, as exports to the EU have been slashed by 68% since Brexit. But let’s be fair as Gove did say trade would be frictionless and what could have less friction than something that doesn’t exist?

Gove has written to the EU to ask for an extended Brexit grace period on checks between Northern Ireland and Britain, because as you know you’re not allowed to eat till after grace. Gove insisted this is not to do with teething problems, you understand, as of course that’d mean the Brexit plan the government have, has teeth.

Instead, Gove said there were serious problems with the Northern Ireland protocol that needed addressing, so may I suggest he sends them in a stamped self-addressed envelope so he and the rest of the government can finally read what it was they signed off on in a rush last year.

The Labour Party have decided their way to win back disillusioned voters is with use of the union flag, veterans and dressing smartly, which sounds like a challenge on a UKIP version of Taskmaster. Who knew that the key to electability in 2021 would be emulating Ginger Spice on a tour of Eastbourne? But a leaked report showed plans to change the party’s body language which at the moment seems to be largely lying on a floor trying to eat themselves like a really boring Ouroboros.

It is strange to think ‘well voters like voting Conservatives so the best way for us to win votes is be so like the Conservatives they might accidentally tick a box for us at elections instead.’ Perhaps they are right though and Labour leader and canopy cooker hood extractor fan Keir Starmer regularly appears to have a pole shoved up him and ideas that are flagging at best, so now all he needs to do is wear a tuxedo and treat animals and I’m sure they’ll be points ahead.

As part of this new image that will appeal to absolutely no one, with Tory voters still choosing Tories and everyone else thinking it’s awful, Labour made a statement that the Royal Family have been a beacon of hope for millions during the pandemic. And I guess that is true as if they’ve managed to stop Prince Andrew getting inappropriately close to people this whole time then it shows how easy social distancing should be for the rest of us. Starmer has also announced that he is pro-business, which doesn’t really mean anything unless you are adamantly anti-hobbies. Though Johnson did say ‘fuck business’ which he has done with Brexit and COVID regulations but judging by how he treats the women he sleeps with, we’re not sure exactly how he meant it.

Equalities Minister and what if Moon Girl was a villain Kemi Badenoch publicly bullied a HuffPost journalist for merely asking her a question, but the Cabinet Office didn’t consider it to be a breach of ministerial code, because as we all know part of being a cabinet minister is not having to justify anything. As a result, the Prime Minister’s senior advisor on ethnic minorities and estate agent basic template Samuel Kasumu offered his resignation over what he said was ‘politics steeped in division’ but then took it back after realising that someone might ask him a question about why he hasn’t quit at least 57 times by now and he might have to answer it.

And finally, the Bank of England say the British economy will rebound strongly due to the vaccine, which I think means based on my experience that it’ll fuck around carelessly to try and ignore all the symptoms of loss it’s been through.

ADMIN

Yeeeeaaaaahhhhh ParPolBrods, how’s that Beast From The East 2 treating you? Trust 2021 to bring us only the sequels no one asked for. We didn’t have Beast from the East 1 in 2018 and think you know what, I’d be keen to see how that story continues. Obviously, some of you have had snow consistently since, I dunno, it probably seems like since 2018 now and so this week is probably of no interest to you at all, but here at the very least the snow is covering up all the potholes that haven’t been fixed in the past year, so at least it’s a surprise when you drive into one. I will take surprises where I can get them thank you. What was actually a lovely surprise was how many of you tuned into the live podcast show on Saturday at Leicester Comedy Festival. Or as I explained on the show, it wasn’t at it. It was just sort of virtually in Leicester. I made myself feel like I was actually there by spending the two hours beforehand driving endlessly around the same one-way system and crying. Thank you if you did turn up. I don’t yet know how much we raised for the Woodgate Community food bank but it should be a decent amount and I’m super grateful to you lot for buying tickets and also to Abi and Tim for being guests on a show that was a tad more stressful to do than this usual lark. I will be putting the audio of that show out as a bonus podcast later in the week and as you’ll hear, some of the gags at the beginning are ones you’ve just heard because, well, only so much news has happened ok? And I could cut that bit out but there’ll be the odd one or two of you that may enjoy hearing how I messed them up or made them better for this podcast. Or you know, you can skip it. But do listen for the interview and then donate to Woodgate Community Foodbank or your local foodbank once you do. Thanks. If you did watch, what did you think? Should I do that again? Or should I never even mention it again? Mention what again? Exactly. I did enjoy it though juggling gags, jingles and interview all at the same time was a bit perplexing at times but keen to try and find other ways to do live specials of this podcast even if it means it gives me the brutal realisation that actually I’d be terrible as a live radio DJ.

So, as it’s a sort of double podcast week, just a quick thanks to somebody, Dave and Carole, Abi, Lynn and Kim for donating to the Ko-fi, and Jen for joining the Patreon. If you enjoy this show enough or use the noise from it block out the sound of that forklift truck moving lots of carpets up and down your road to the carpet shop – sorry that is exactly what’s happening as I’m recording this and it’s a really loud noise. You’d think the carpets would muffle it, but no. Still raises my hopes of survival for if I’m ever rolled in one by gangsters – then please donate a few pennies to the ko-fi.com/parpolbro, join the Patreon.com/parpolbro or via the Acast supporter button on the app. You can also grab yourself some nifty pants or PJs from British-boxers.com who are still sponsoring this podcast as you might have heard from the earlier jingle. If you head to their site and buy anything using the code PARPOLBRO10 then you get 10%, help out a lovely ethical independent business and I get some pocket money too. Obviously if you can’t do any of those things then instead leave the show a lovely review like Barrie has done this week on Apple Podcasts, thanks tons, or just spread the word and get even more ears to this show. Attached to people’s heads that is. I don’t want to be responsible for a Reservoir Dogs style situation.

Oh, and last thing is that I’m not sure I can mention this yet but I’m going to anyway. Other than this podcast, I do the Comedy Club 4 Kids podcast Radio Nonsense, which we’ve been doing loads of new ones of lately, including the most recent one being Athena Kugblenu answering 11 questions from an 8-year-old all about poo. It’s a lot of fun. But on top of that, I’ve been asked to be one of the storytellers on the very popular Supergreat Kids Stories podcast so if you have wee ones, you’ll hear me telling a Norse myth and other stories on there soon which is exciting. It is a properly lovely pod so well worth a subscribe if you have kids who like listening to a good yarn. As opposed to this podcast for all of you who are sick of the government spinning shit ones.

On this week’s show I am speaking to multiple time pod guest, the brilliant Emily Kenway, about her new book ‘The Truth About Modern Slavery’ and a little bit in the middle about everyone’s favourite subject of cladding. Who doesn’t bloody love construction material-based chat? Well, this is a multi-layered show after all. Ahem.

INTERVIEW WITH EMILY PART 1

To say that many Brits are confused by the term slavery, is an understatement. To some it refers to something we abolished by stopping the suffering of slave owners by paying them lots of money to not have to go to trouble of owning people anymore and actually pulling down their statues is worse as it upsets stone trolls or something. Or for many recently, it was used to refer to what the EU was doing to the UK, you know by allowing us to trade freely with them and boost environmental standards. Classic slavery there, obviously. When it comes to modern slavery, there is sadly just as much confusion. Many might assume that it’s just like slavery that we understand and know from history, or that it refers to human trafficking, or being a parent to a toddler. Actually, the term modern slavery covers so many types of exploitation, while also posing as a handy cover-all term for politicians who want to insist they are doing something about something important while not really doing anything at all and often making it worse. According to the government’s own website modern slavery is defined as the recruitment, movement, harbouring or receiving of anyone through the means of force, coercion, abuse of vulnerability, deception or other means for the purpose of exploitation. Yet under that they don’t include anyone – for example – who was forced to do

the workfare scheme in order to claim their benefits, or the DVLA staff who’ve been forced to go to work during a pandemic or you know, parents of toddlers. Ok not the last one but there are days… Here’s the thing. There are situations of horrific exploitation in the UK, but you have to question when the government calls modern slavery ‘one of the greatest human rights issues of our time’ why they are concerned about that human rights issue, but none of the others they’ve been causing. And also, why, if they’re really that keen on stopping it, so many of their policies, on immigration in particular, are actually making it much more prevalent. Is it just that in reality, like our country’s confused narrative about how we somehow abolished slavery by not bothering to make any reparations to the victims of it, that now our government, along with many other politicians around the world, are tackling modern slavery by just pretending it’s everything except the exploitation they really like? ‘Oh yeah, those domestic workers whose visas have been so limited they are at the complete behest of their employers from the moment they arrive? Nah that’s not slavery, because they’re from one of them forrin places and it’s what we have to do to so they don’t take all the horrifically low paid abusive jobs that Brits wouldn’t do anyway. Obviously. Totes fine.’

This week’s podcast guest is the brilliant Emily Kenway, who has in fact been a podcast guest twice before. Most recently was back in Ep156 in 2019, where she explained all about what modern slavery was and if the Modern Slavery Act had done anything to stop it. The answers were, as you can probably guess, mostly ‘no not really’. Since then, Emily has written and recently released her book ‘The Truth About Modern Slavery’ which is a brilliant challenge to the narratives we have on the term, how it’s been used as a political tool by governments and legitimises other areas of exploitation. As you’ll hear when I talk to Emily, it’s hard to describe how I felt about the book, as ‘enjoyed’ is the wrong word for something that highlights so much exploitation and how framing can be used in such a harmful way. But I did find it fascinating, eye opening and one of those books that I’d recommend everyone read, not just in terms of how we understand modern slavery but also how applicable it is to so many of the recent political crusades the government have championed. So, listen to this, then go get the book and read it all and then tell everyone else to as well. Here is Emily:

INTERVIEW WITH EMILY PART 1

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

Back in 2017 after the horrific Grenfell fire tragedy, the government, then lead by flue duct Theresa May, promised they would do everything they could to ensure another fire like that never happened again. So, you’ll be unsurprised to know that there are still up to 11 million people still living in properties with unsafe cladding because for the Conservatives they obviously interpreted ensuring it never happens again to mean just specifically to Grenfell tower and everywhere else would be a new issue they haven’t got time to think about till something terrible happens. Worse still is that the costs for removing the cladding have completely bypassed the construction firms that put it there and instead gone straight to leaseholders via huge service fees, some of whom have gone bankrupt as a result and many are unable to sell their properties because it is the one time where the smell of something cooking really won’t help potential buyers. Meanwhile all tenants are suffering higher costs of up to 440% increases from insurance companies, that think the best way to help people who’ve are stuck in a death trap are to charge them for the privilege. The government announced a £1bn Building Safety Fund 12 months ago, but the problem was that £1bn only covered 20-30% of all project costs if that, so someone had to stump up the costs and unfortunately that someone is all the people that shouldn’t have to stump up the costs.

The Labour party brought an opposition motion to Parliament last week calling for the government to take action on removing all flammable cladding, but Conservative MPs abstained from voting. Now it’d be very easy to say that that’s due to all of them not giving a shit but perhaps as depressingly, it’s because it was an opposition day motion which means the government aren’t bound to do anything about it and playing politics is apparently more important than playing with fireproofing. However, the Prime Minister did announce last week that they’d be outlining a plan very shortly, so that could be anywhere between the time you hear this and 2032. Advisor to the cabinet Michael Wade, who looks like if Dr Bunsen had been very ill, devised a plan last year for long term longs to companies

that own the buildings which then would be paid back by leaseholders through service charges, which again sort of just means that the people who are responsible for the cladding being there in the first place take absolutely zero responsibility and everyone who lives there has to pay the world’s most over complicated protection racket for wanting to stay safe. Campaigners are calling it a ‘cladding tax’ which is right on two levels as it is very much insulating those responsible from consequences. The government have said that isn’t what they will do, but they’ve also kept Michael Wade on board to help them work on ‘financial solutions’ so there’s every chance the outcome will actually be worse. This is also the responsibility of Housing Secretary and what if someone made a sculpture of Ben Affleck but out of sponges and with their eyes closed Robert Jenrick who’s so concerned about the issue, he didn’t even turn up to the vote last week and instead sent a junior communities minister who seemed to get over-excited that he was allowed to talk to people. So, while some sort of bail out for those hit by unfair costs would be welcomed, it’d be entirely fair to be concerned that it’ll be big businesses saved from costs as it turns out they’ve replaced it with cheap cladding that explodes when it rains, while everyone who lives in the buildings have to pay it back by giving their first born to Richard Desmond or something. One unnamed Whitehall source as none of them ever seem to have names like their parents were that neglectful, told The Times that there is concern that if the government give the leaseholders campaign an inch, they will want a mile. Urgh how dare these people want to live somewhere that isn’t a fire trap and not have to pay their lifesavings to fix someone’s mistake. I swear if this government were hostage negotiators, they’d tell the kidnapper they could have anything they wanted, then detain the hostages as they were released and tell them they’ve got to hand over cash to cover the £6m in notes and the helicopter as its their fault for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The End Our Cladding Scandal has a ten-step plan which they’ve submitted to the government which overall asks for all cladding to be removed and for all residents to be supported so hopefully at least some, if not all of it will be taken into consideration when the plan is revealed. Fingers crossed that for once, ever, the government do something constructive.

And now back to Emily…

INTERVIEW WITH EMILY PART 2

It was great to get Emily back on the podcast and I honestly can’t rave enough about how good and important her book is. You can grab ‘The Truth About Modern Slavery’ at plutopress.com and also at all the other book shops but not from the actual physical shops obviously as that’s not allowed. You can find Emily on Twitter @emilykenway and her website is emilykenway.com. Thanks also to James at Pluto Press.

Next week I have a bit of a different guest politically, to normal and I think it should be a pretty interesting chat. But after that, who, what, where no wait not where I’ll have to interview them from home, because, well, everything. Why definitely though. Who to talk to and about what. You can of course, send any suggestions you might have to me @Parpolbro on twitter, the Partly Political Broadcast Facebook group, the contact page at partlypoliticalbroadcast.co.uk or email me at partlypoliticalbroadcast@gmail.com. Or you could just bring it up at the next Handforth Parish Council meeting and guaranteed everyone will hear about it very, very soon, unless Jackie Weaver decides to mute you. As always, it’s probably just best to email isn’t it?

END

That is the end of this week’s Partly Political Broadcast and thank you all the amounts in both metric and imperial for listening in once again. If you enjoyed any of that, then please do tell everyone that’s ever existed, alive, dead or immortal, to subscribe to this here podcast for a weekly helping. Perhaps give it a nice 5 star review on any of the podcast grabbing platforms that let you do that, and maybe even, should the desire take you, donate a few monies to the ko-fi.com/parpolbro, join the patreon.com/parpolbro or via the Acast supporter button.

Endless gratitudes to these amazing dudes, Acast, my brother the Last Skeptik, Kat Day and Katie Coxall.

There will be a bonus pod offering of the live Leicester show in a few days, but otherwise, this will be back next week when with rising cases of the South African variant the government insists local elections will happen but voters must bring their own polling stations, ballot boxers, voting slips and pens, and schools, churches and town halls to put them in.

BYEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

This week’s show was sponsored by:

Hotel Quarantine, a brand-new reality show on Channel 4, featuring z-list celebs who have to stay in their rooms indefinitely, and complete tasks like try to get a shopping delivery slot or try to get dressed even once. Watch as that one from that band who broke up before they did even one song, injures himself trying to open a bottle lid on the desk and no one finds his body for 6 days. Laugh as that one from that show on that channel no one has tries to climb out of the window but gets detained and fined £10,000. Hotel Quarantine, coming soon to channel 4.

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