Further Reading

Linear liner notes 

Nurses don’t need money right? They just need more nurses right and then they can exchange their colleagues for food or shelter at the nurse bank or something. I’m not sure that’s right but it seems to be what the Prime Minister thinks. No money for nurses, or for anyone to survive past the Autumn according to the Chancellor but luckily the Conservatives can be trusted on the economy which is why there is all the dosh for a big room with TVs in it and to prove the Home Secretary definitely isn’t a bully to the tune of £340,000. This week’s podcast has all the usual jokes, a look at the Budget and a chat with Alysa Remtulla, Head of Policy and Campaigns at the brilliant charity Magic Breakfast (@magic_breakfast) on making sure kids get fed.

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

• • Magic Breakfast on Twitter – https://twitter.com/magic_breakfast 
• • Magic Breakfast website – https://www.magicbreakfast.com/ 
• • Magic Breakfast on Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/magicbreakfastuk 
• • Magic Breakfast on Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/magicbreky/    
• • The World Food Foundation on Twitter – https://twitter.com/WorldFoodPrize 
• • End Child Food Poverty website – https://endchildfoodpoverty.org/ 
• • End Child Poverty on Twitter – https://twitter.com/endchildpoverty 
• • Joseph Rowntree Foundation on Twitter – https://twitter.com/jrf_uk 

All the usual ParPolBro stuff:

• • Get 10% off at British Boxers with the code in the episode – https://british-boxers.com/ 
• • 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

Ep224

Hello and welcome to the Partly Political Broadcast, the comedy politics podcast that is an important step towards a sense of normality, because if there’s a new episode then things are definitely still shit and show no signs of changing. I’m Tiernan Douieb and as Prime Minister and toddler’s collage of a burning trash pile Boris Johnson says that for education recovery, the government will take the biggest step forwards with a concerted program, I say good luck finding acts for the concerts when you’ve made things so shit for the arts.

‘1% is as much as we can give’ said Prime Minister and toddler’s collage of a burning trash pile Boris Johnson. No, it wasn’t a rare moment of self-aware truth about his government’s performance but instead supporting the minimalistic pay rise for nurses, because how can they possibly put their hands in their pockets if they have to use them to clap instead, and we all know what’s more useful to nursing staff. We owe them more than words can say, said the Prime Minister last year when they saved his life after catching COVID, but of course it would help if he’d said words that meant nurses got enough money to not have to go to food banks after their 13-hour shifts. I guess one year on, it’s very clear and obvious that as the Prime Minister said, these are tough times thanks to the pandemic and that means everyone has to be very careful about what money is spent on. You can’t just willy-nilly allow nurses to pay their bills, when £9m has to be spent on a situation room in Whitehall so that Johnson can sit in it and pretend he’s in any other situation than the one he’s currently in. I mean situation rooms are meant to be for intelligence so maybe it is needed so the PM has somewhere he could actually go for that, but they are also meant for military information. Why does he need that right now? Does Johnson so desperately want updates on the supposed culture war, demanding to know that no statue has its feelings hurt or if the army are stepping in to stop people at universities from wearing badges or dying their hair? £2.6m of taxpayer’s money has already been spent on a media centre at Number 10 Downing Street because the one thing the government don’t have enough of is media and if they could just get the 5% that don’t support them into one room all together then maybe they can lock the door and not have to deal with them anymore and the rest of the news won’t bother to report that it ever happened. There’s not even enough money to redecorate other parts of number 10 and 11 including the flat Johnson lives in, so the Prime Minister is looking at setting up a charitable fund just to cover the costs. Millions are out of work and kids are starving but I can’t think of a bigger cause right now than more throw cushions to cover up all the ominous stains Johnson keeps leaving everywhere as he insists on humping all the furniture.

The Royal College of Nursing has said the pay rise, which amounts to about £4 a day or one 3,644,578.3rdth of a situation room, will mean large numbers of staff could quit as it makes them feel they aren’t being valued. I mean that’s not true as they are being valued it’s just at a lot less than they’re worth, so that it might lower the overall cost of the NHS and seem more appealing to buyers who’ll pick it up an auction then turn make it unaffordable for everyone else. There is talk of a nurses strike which I’d support but what might be better is just for every nurse to get bullied by Home Secretary and Marquis De Sad Priti Patel and then they’d all receive £340,000 each as a settlement like ex-Home Office chief and child in a bald wig Philip Rutnam did. I mean if you are accused of bullying one way to definitely make sure no one thinks that you did it, is to have an out of court settlement for hundreds of thousands of pounds to ensure no one talks about it again but I’m sure Patel just chose that route for entirely innocent reasons. Or maybe £340,000 is just her giving back all the lunch money made her staff hand over or else. Boris Johnson said the nurses won’t get a bigger pay rise as its more important to spend money on hiring more nurses than paying the current ones more as what nurses really want is more colleagues on the wards. Sure and I reckon you’ll definitely get them in with a lack of pay, that’s how to entice people. At least add some mystery to why everyone else has left rather than entice people in by saying ‘you’d have an easier and better paid time doing almost anything else.’

There was no special ‘covering Priti’s bullying costs’ or ‘money we aren’t giving nurses’ sections in the budget last week. No they were omitted and snuck out after, meaning the Chancellor and Numberblock 4 Rishi Sunak could announce a bundle of insistencies about ‘doing whatever it takes’ while making sure that most of the people doing the taking would be the ones who’ve already got everything.  It was delivered, as always, in true automation program intonation as though The Chancellor couldn’t even spare any extras on presentation. Sunak warned that the economy will shrink by 3%, an econo-mini if you like, and will take a long time to recover, which is why he has gone for the Stephen King’s Misery option of pretending he’s going to help it heal while repeatedly breaking its legs so it can’t go anywhere and leave his care. Furlough is being extended till September, as it it’s always nice when even government policy doesn’t believe in its own COVID optimism. Self-Employment support has also been extended till September but only in the way that in May there’ll be a payment to cover three months and then to replicate normal freelance life, you should be able to spread that out so there’s at least 3 days a week where you’re worried about income and therefore feel like everything is back to normal. Universal Credit uplift will end at the same time as furlough and SEISS does, which means that once the COVID death toll has dropped completely we can be back to the usual rates of people dying from austerity measures like before and it’ll all feel more normal again. Business rates are getting a holiday even though we were all told we shouldn’t book one yet. Fuel duty was frozen again to make up for the ice caps doing the opposite and there was a lot of talk about 95% mortgages turning generation rent into generation buy, but as there was no real help for renters announced it wasn’t clear if Sunak was spelling that as B-Y-E. Freeports will be implemented meaning that even more people can follow in the footsteps of the government and do unlawful things, and part of the treasury is being moved to Teeside, which makes sense as thanks to the parmo, they are brilliant at covering up chicken choices so they’re unrecognisable to outsiders.

What the Chancellor didn’t mention at all though was social care, anything for people with disabilities and their carers, those millions who’ve been excluded from all pandemic support so far, children or the climate which only got a shout out just after the fuel duty freeze and money for roads, when Sunak said the Green Investment Bank would be getting less than it was going to. To be fair to him though, those were nearly all things that were neglected pre-COVID so maybe The Chancellor’s just really pushing for things to get back to normal.

There’s a high chance he’ll do another one in 6 months’ time where Sunak will tell us all we’ve got a week to pay everything back. Well, everyone except big business and rentiers as nurses will probably have to pay back their share with their massive 1% increase as it’s not fair that the private sector have taken a hit and the public sector haven’t with their pay that’s been frozen for ten years and constant underfunding. Apart from all the constant pay hits I’ve just mentioned which don’t count because no one’s mentioning them. But I guess it is us who is accountable for the last few years as the World Health Organisation have said that obesity was the driver of Britain’s high COVID death toll. Wow. Who knew that if we were all thinner the borders would’ve closed themselves a year ago? New Zealand is the 11^th most obese country in the world and only managed to have 26 deaths, Australia is number 16 but has had less than 1000, whereas we’re number 25 but have now had over 130,000. So maybe it’s less to do with body fat and more the unnecessary harmful bulk in number 10? Johnson said that he’s putting money into making the country healthier, which is a strange way to refer to his lack of COVID control causing a rapid thinning out of the population. The Prime Minister said he’s worked hard to lose weight, but I don’t think it counts if you shed millions of pounds by giving them to your mates.

COVID infection rates, hospitalisations and deaths are all down massively, which is great and why it’s perfect that all schools in England have all opened up this week to allow the virus another chance. The Education Secretary and Doctor Who villain the Silence except we wish he was Gavin Williamson insisted that school safety measures are in place, the same ones that reduced transmission rates last September. Yes, you all remember don’t you when schools were so safe, having them open slowed the virus down to the extent we had to have a lockdown in November. It is incredible to have someone in charge of Education who doesn’t seem capable of learning anything. Schools are safe for pupils says Williamson so its lucky no one else in the schools with them and that they teach themselves. This will be the first week back in school this year for many pupils and Williamson said they are looking at longer school days and shorter holidays to allow children to catch up because the best way to make reparations to kids and teachers for being stuck indoors and exhausted for the past year, is to make them stuck indoors and exhausted somewhere else for the rest of it. It’s like trying to do amends to someone who’s been wrongly imprisoned, by paying for them to have a holiday in a Japanese capsule hotel.

Another new coronavirus variant has been added to the watchlist and I don’t know about you but I’m getting so sick of the trend for seeing something works and just replicating with it with a slightly different name. First panel shows, then superhero films and now COVID. Boring. On the plus the one person who tested positive for the Brazilian variant was found by the Department of Health by that person contacting them. Which according to Health Secretary and how to have a furrowed brow for your entire face Matt Hancock means that was a government victory, though I’m sure if that person turns out to have infected anyone else it’ll be their fault entirely. £37bn has now been allocated to test and trace which feels like a lot just to get a catchy phone number to ask people to call into if they can be bothered.

In other news, the UK is cutting the amount of aid it’s sending to Yemen due to the costs of the pandemic, because while Yemen is the world’s largest humanitarian crisis, helping those kids won’t get Johnson a bin that has a basketball hoop on it, for his new room with all the TV’s in it. The UN have said they are shocked by the decision and said the UK has decided to balance its books on the backs of the starving people of Yemen, which I mean, does sound like exactly like something many in the government would do if the service was there and it meant they wouldn’t have to carry them themselves. So now we’ll just be selling Saudi Arabia the weapons to cause the famine but no ‘sorry’ hamper alongside it to balance out the guilt. I suppose in some ways its good we’ve finally confirmed our position and it does mean that when the government refuse to spend money feeding British kids too, no one will be able to claim that they are spending money feeding kids elsewhere instead. No, no, our government are clear that they don’t like kids everywhere.

Over in Brexit town cursed Baba Papa and Brexit minister Lord Frost has written an article saying that people are complaining too much about customs and form filling, as though traders should be pleased he’s actively made their lives more cumbersome. He’s the sort of man who’d ram into your car then insist you be grateful that he’s given it some character. The UK are trying to extend the grace period on border checks for goods going to Northern Ireland from Britain, but the EU are launching a legal challenge saying that it violates international law. Frost has responded to this challenge by saying the EU need to shake off any remaining ill will though I’m certain we did that for them when we left. He seems to think the EU’s their legal case is just because they miss us or something. That’s the weirdest excuse for unlawful activity I’ve ever heard, and I can only assume that his current wife is still with him out of fear he’ll burgle her house and say it’s her fault for being jealous if she gets upset about it.

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, the charity worker who was jailed in Iran for spying charges after Boris Johnson told authorities she was a journalist has now had her ankle tag removed at the end of her five-year sentence but faces another court case. The Prime Minister tweeted that she must be released permanently, and they are doing all they can to achieve this, which isn’t true, or he’d have refrained from saying another fucking word till she gets home, in-case he says out loud that Nazanin has to get back to the newspaper or something and she’s arrested for another decade. Visual gag reflex Nigel Farage has announced that he’s quitting active politics, which probably means he’ll expect to get all the benefits from active politics in years to come and get angry and blame everyone else when it turns out he’s not allowed them anymore.

And finally, as has been the big news everywhere, former royals Harry and Meghan gave an exclusive interview with Oprah Winfrey where Meghan said the family treated her so badly there were times, she contemplated suicide which means the Queen has now added that to her list of ‘plausible accidental deaths to arrange’. Apparently one unnamed Royal was concerned that Meghan and Harry’s baby’s skin may be too dark. Now I have to say, I wasn’t remotely interested in the interview as if I wanted to hear a couple go on and on about how the royal family are racist and the British press are racist and shit, I’d just have a conversation with my wife. Ha, joke, we’re too tired to discuss anything other than what to have for dinner. But the interview has completely changed my view of the monarchy. I mean I was certain they were all giant lizard people, but lizard’s eyes can actually recognise all colours, so now I think they’re all sadly human. Prior to the interview many newspapers reported that Meghan was being investigated for bullying, which I can only assume is because Prince Philip kept demanding she clean things or bring food and he got upset when she kept reminding him that she was family not the staff. While there has been a lot of support for Meghan and Harry, many of the newspapers of course insist that the Royals aren’t an outdated costly institution steeped in racism, but if that’s true then why do all the guards at Buckingham Palace have to be trooped by colour every morning? Hmm? I should say that just before I recorded the Society of Editors UK responded to the interview by insisting that the British press isn’t bigoted, but considering how much they’ve lied about everything else I expect a small retraction on page 24 in the coming weeks.

ADMIN

Hellooo to you. I didn’t want to mention the Harry and Meghan stuff this week but unfortunately the fact that our country still pays a ton of money for a bunch of increasingly withered people to have gold chairs just because they were born in the right family, is a large part of why the UK is a stupid place. As awful as it is, and it is awful, there is nothing remotely surprising about Meghan saying she’d experienced racism, I mean it’s basically always been Prince Philip’s personal shit brand and its completely indicative of our culture that it was seen as a funny trait rather than proof he should’ve been sent on a never-ending awareness course until he was fixed. It is so, so weird – and yes I know this is an often remarked thing and not at all original – but it is weird that if tabloids found any other family that kept having kids, leeching off the state and defending their paedophile son, they’d be vilified within seconds. I always loved the Sue Townsend book The Queen and I where the monarchy is abolished and they all get moved into a council estate. If you’ve never read it, its beautifully funny, if a tad dated now, and I still think, a really good idea. So anyway, yes sorry, that story is on this podcast too as yet another example of the racism within the system and now I promise I won’t talk about it ever again. What I will talk about though is that I have got my vaccines booked. Yes, it turns out there are benefits to having T1 diabetes, aside from you know, getting to fix symptoms with a biscuit. Which actually is still the best benefit. But apart from that, it meant I qualify for this next round so I’m getting jabbed in the arm this Friday and then once I punch them back, I think we have an overall scuff and then I win the injection or something. I’m not sure how it works. Anyway, I’ll be fully double jabbed by early June if all goes to plan and then I’ll be able to come round and cough in all your faces individually just in time for the summer, so that will hopefully give you something to look forward to for then. Yes I know there are still concerns that people who’ve been vaccinated can transmit the virus but I promise I won’t. Does that help? I’ll just make sure I don’t. Thanks. Anyway, I’m very excited and I’m secretly hoping it makes me a little bit ill so I can spend one day in bed complaining about it and not parenting and just watching TV. Unfortunately, I’ve said this around the flat too many times now and I don’t think my wife or agent will believe me if I say I’m all sickly. Sigh, me and my big mouth.

Not much else to say this week other than a shout out to all teachers who listen to this and all parents with kids who’ve gone back to school. I hope things are safe for you and that I’m not making jokes about how schools have had to close again by next week’s show. Also a big shout out to Kim and Somebody for donating to the ko-fi this week and as always, should you fancy donating to this show especially now it seems the second SEISS payment is to cover 5 months but only be 3 months pay, woohoo thanks Rishi, then you can do that via kofi.com/parpolbro, join the patreon.com/parpolbro, via the Acast supporter button or just get something from British-boxers.com using the code PARPOLBRO10. And of-course you can just review the show somewhere, or tell someone about it, or just listen to it on 600 different devices with different IP addresses and that’ll be as good to be fair. If anything, probably the cheaper option too.

And that’s that. So on this week’s show I am talking to Alysa at the brilliant charity Magic Breakfast who make sure kids are fed all over the UK, and in the middle I take a little looksie at what you really need to know about the budget. No, its not what’s in the red box. We all know it contains a poo and that’s why the Chancellors always have to hold it arms length. Yes, that is true. Yes it is. No don’t look it up. Definitely true.

INTERVIEW WITH ALYSA PART 1

The only reason you should ever think feeding kids is bad, is if you’re feeding them too something, like the ancient village mythical beast. Otherwise, there should be nary a soul who’d be against the idea of children having enough to eat unless it’s very specifically because they’re asking for a snack just an hour before dinner is ready and you know that that’ll mean there’s no way they’ll eat the healthy meal you’ve spent ages preparing because they’re now all full of crisps. Sorry, got a bit personal for me then. I find it truly strange that we live in an age where providing kids with food can be a contentious issue especially as it’s usually the one emotional hit point that’d even make Miss Trunchbull give to charity. But of course, its 2021 so that means we have a government who’ll try their very best to dodge spending extra cash on free school meals for kids who need them, presumably because they need that money in order to spend it on another media room or something more important. And anyway, how will the children get prepped for next year’s Hunger Games rollout as the way to rebuild the country post-COVID otherwise? It has only really been down to celebrity pressure from footballer Marcus Rashford that’s seen two big u-turns from the government on providing free school meals to children who need them during the school holidays, and while I think very highly of Rashford, when it comes down to a footballer having to persuade the government to feed kids it does feel like we’ve hit a low and also a sigh of relief that times have changed and it wasn’t Gazza demanding they all get chicken buckets and six cans each or it might not have worked. If it wasn’t for Marcus Rashford, the government had seemed pretty keen to let kids just go a week or so without any. I understand the Prime Minister doesn’t really know how many children he has or what they do, but to presume that maybe like a squirrel they bury bits of their term time food in order to store them for the winter, or just like a camel just store it up so they can go for weeks without, is really strange. Of course, as many Conservative MPs insisted during the debates about it, that it’s the parent’s fault for not providing food as responsible parents wouldn’t have let a global pandemic happen and it’s their fault if they aren’t willing to instantly develop a vaccine on the spot or do like other responsible parents and drive to Barnard castle to test their eyesight. Child poverty has been rising in the UK since 2012 and will reach the highest since records began by 2023 unless action is taken. Children that are hungry don’t learn or progress as well as their peers and often go on to have health issues later in life. So why when Gavin Williamson insists his focus is on delivering the best for children that doesn’t include grub, proving that he definitely shouldn’t be Education Secretary if he wouldn’t even do well as a Deliveroo driver?

This week I spoke to Alysa Remtulla, Head of Policy and Campaigns at the amazing charity Magic Breakfast, who have for the past 20 years, provided free school breakfasts to children who need them and would otherwise go hungry. While it is obviously a shame that such a charity should ever need to exist, they now do invaluable work supporting hundreds of thousands of children in England, Scotland and Wales. Just before the budget, Magic Breakfast had a big campaign to get the Chancellor to include a permanent breakfast support scheme in his policy announcements, but sadly and unsurprisingly, nothing of the kind was mentioned. So I asked Alysa about how the pandemic has effected the demand for free school meals for kids, why it takes the support of a famous footballer for people to get behind the really not very radical idea of actually feeding kids and just what the government should do next. You know in an ideal world where there is an entirely different government but not ideal enough that they’ve fixed child poverty yet. Yes the bar for a better world right now is very low. I really appreciate Alysa having the time to chat in what is a busy week for the campaign with schools going back, so I hope you enjoy and find this as informative and useful as I did when speaking to her. Here’s Alysa:

INTERVIEW WITH ALYSA PART 1:

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

BUDGET, BUDGET

Yes, another one of them budgets happened and I’m not going to go into every teeny little detail but its safe to say that like Rishi Sunak’s endless pointless posts, it was largely the same useless shit but with a different filter on. Rishi Sunak made a big hoo ha, as much as you can when you can’t make your voice do anything more than bored tannoy announcement anyway, about how once again he will do whatever it takes to support businesses and people but some of the whatever it will take wasn’t even mentioned. Now it is possible he’s just made cuts to his own awareness of what’s needed but chances are higher that was just another thing he said in a nice font that will go on a fancy tweet and there’ll still be large chunks of the country screwed by Wednesday’s announcements.

Oh fo sho its good that there is more support to cover the further poo times, but all of it looks like it’s due to end in six months meaning that suddenly wham, everyone’s unemployed, broke and out of a home just in time for Autumn. I mean at least get that right and end it a month earlier in time for summer. Yeesh. In October the universal credit lift will get cut meaning the poorest households will have a drop in income of 7% and unemployment benefits will be at their lowest levels since the 1990s, which unemployment is also likely to hit a big ol’ high as soon as the furlough ends. The SEISS payments are lasting till September but only because the last payment in May is for three months cash but to last 5 months which does make me worry that Sunak thinks the tax year is only 9 months long but it would explain a lot. At least the SEISS now includes people who were registered self-employed in 2019-20 but there’s still hundreds of thousands of people who’ve been excluded from all help and will continue to get nada and all most young people have is the Kickstart scheme which has so far only created 3 jobs per 1000 so far and there’s no support to help anyone retrain who’s lost work. But that’s ok as it all balances out with contactless payments now being up to £100 so you can walk too close to a till and accidentally buy someone else’s shopping if you’re having a good day. There also a ton of reasons why increased contactless payments are discriminatory and make things harder for homeless people as we no longer have change to give them and also makes me spend money I don’t have because I can’t resist pretending that I have a magic jedi card.

Social Care wasn’t even mentioned at all even though its set to have a £4bn funding gap by 2025, something that was exacerbated by cheeky COVID and the fact the protective ring around care homes that the government promised, seemed to be on the outside of them and stopped any PPE coming in. As you’ll hear in this week’s interview there’s no money for free school meals. There was also a large hole where something, anything should have been said about what’s known as COVID legacy costs. Which yes sound like its some sort of fund for a statue of COVID which wouldn’t be good but then the government would also get angry if anyone wanted to tear it down anyway it isn’t that. It’s the costs needed to deal with COVID in future years if it doesn’t just do a vanishing act a la Spanish Flu. Government departments have had £150bn extra last year and this to deal with COVID stuff, but from April 2022 there’s nothing there. Will they just stop doing vaccine programs? Will test and trace stop working? Sorry I mean keep working as it has been? Will hospital backlogs mean you’ll have to book appointments for a decade’s time and hope you’ve accurately described what state you’ll be in by then? In fact what the government have announced instead is a £15bn cut to government departments per year starting after this one which already included a £4bn cut. So yes by realising that many services were underprepared for a pandemic and needed extra funding, Sunak has worked out that for extra security and safety should there be a next time, the same needs to happen again but worse and whatever the new lurgy is, hyper edition sars II or something, we might also still be dealing with COVID remnants at the same time.

The climate got a tiny mention which is odd as it’s a huge bloody thing, and the main global warming tackling strategy was a new infrastructure bank that will, to quote the Labour manifesto 2019 where it’s been copied and pasted from, finance the green revolution. Except it won’t, as the Office for Budget Responsibility has said the funding of £12bn per year is so small it’ll have absolutely no effect on anything. Like an infrastructure version of Grant Shapps if you like. What is weird is that the £12bn allocated is actually £20bn less than the government’s own commission recommended and even worse, its now four years since the Conservatives sold off the Green Investment Bank that had a national infrastrure remit and four years since leaving the European Investment bank that spent £5bn a year on projects. So this is just a cheap reboot with a terrible cast and smaller budget. What makes it worse is that Green Homes Grant of £1.5bn, an insulation scheme started last year, ends this month and those who take advantage of it have to have the work done by 2022. Except the scheme is so rubbish and confusing, only 6% of the funds have been allocated and rather than roll it over or continue the scheme, it just looks like it’s ending. So in the year we are holding the COP26 climate change conference, we’re unlikely to meet any targets, are scrapping the one scheme we had and spending not enough money achieving nothing at all and it’ll still be cheap to buy petrol because you may as well drive around looking at everything on fire. It’s like the Henry’s Cat of climate change tackling. Yes that is a dated reference. No, I won’t explain what Henry’s Cat was. You google it, look it up, then laugh at the joke that you’ll have forgotten by then. Hey, it gives you something to do.

Two other things worth noting. There was nothing at all for renters, which is worrying as there are currently 700,000 in debt arrears and the eviction ban runs out at the end of this month. Local Housing Allowance is frozen from April too, which will make it harder for renters to access appropriate benefits to afford their rent. However, if you want to buy a home, stamp duty holiday has been extended for three more months and there are now 95% mortgages which in the South of the country you’ll still need a massive deposit for and there’s still a shortage of houses so oops, house prices will rise all over the shop which will also push up rent prices and I’ll see you down the park because that’s where we’ll all live now. We’ll turn generation rent into generation buy, said Sunak making it sound like an awful magic trick. But if anything he’ll turn a lot of them into generation homeless and everyone else into generation broke, while generation buy become generation buy everything and everyone else is generation why oh why.

Then there’s the £1bn for ‘levelling up’ towns, which take it from me as someone who lives in a hilly area, I don’t want more of that. The money announced won’t even halfway cover the £2.4bn that’s been cut and also, it’s all a bit fishy Rishi that 39 of the 45 towns that are getting the funding are represented by Conservative MPs. There is also the community renewal fund which is a separate pot of cash that again, seems to be benefiting mostly Conservative seats including Sunak’s own, which is also receiving the levelling up fund despite being in the top five most prosperous places in England. Is it levelling up or is it the case that if you have money you can buy upgrades before you play the game meaning you’re automatically way ahead from everyone else and benefit from the advantage?

This is a moment of difficulties and of possibilities too, said the Chancellor, but sadly based on this budget, it’s mostly a possibility of more difficulties for loads of us. If only some of the departmental cuts included the role of the Chancellor.

And now back to Alysa…

INTERVIEW WITH ALYSA PART 2

Thanks to Alysa for having time to chat, especially considering how busy Magic Breakfast are right now. They really are doing remarkable work so do check out their website at magicbreakfast.com, follow them on twitter @magic_breakfast, @magicbreky on Instagram and magicbreakfastuk on Facebook. Please donate to them if you can afford to as well and help share and support all their upcoming campaigns to make sure kids don’t go hungry.

If you’ve got suggestions for who I should interview on this podcast or really anything to do with this podcast, or indeed what on earth I’m doing with my life, then you can send any such wisdom to @parpolbro on Twitter, the Partly Political Broadcast group on Facebook, the contact page at partlypoliticalbroadcast.co.uk or just email me at partlypoliticalbroadcast@gmail.com. Or you could reveal it during an exclusive interview with Oprah, but I’ll never hear that bit as I’ll have zero interest in watching it and only get to see the newspaper headlines as they all say no one cares about it even though they’re doing 40 pages of coverage and they’ll all angry that you once ate a burger with your fingers which makes you worse than Hitler or something. So as always, it’s probably just best to email isn’t it?

END

And that’s it for this week’s Partly Political Broadcast podcast so you know, you can carry on with your day now. Were you planning anything nice? Like tidying up the cupboards so you can sit and hide in there till it’s all over? Or maybe rearrange your toes or perhaps even give the local potholes a nice clean so they look all sparkly? Well, whatever you have planned, I hope it goes delightfully and thank you for choosing to listen to this show, fact it is a show, before your important duties. If you have enjoyed any of the sounds I or my squeaky chair has made, then please do announce such things to others who may enjoy, give it a few nice words and a 5 star review on Apple podcasts or one of them other other podcast review holes and should you be feeling generous, maybe even fling enough coinage my way for a coffee or twelve, at ko-fi.com/parpolbro, the patreon.com/parpolbro page or the Acast supporter button.

All of the eternal gracious thanks to Acast, my brother the Last Skeptik, Kat Day and Katie Coxall.

This will be back next week when Boris Johnson announces a u-turn on Nurses Pay rise of 1% by saying there won’t be a pay rise at all but for every hour a nurse works, then can work two more hours for free, and then is baffled when the entire health service vanishes overnight.

BYEEEEEEEEEEEEE

This week’s show was sponsored by Lord Frost Insurance. Bashed your car? Stop moaning, it’s your fault someone drove into you. If you’d had a nicer car to begin with they might’ve respected it more. Now piss off.

CLICK TO GO BACK