Further Reading

Ep240

Welcome to the Partly Political Broadcast, the comedy politics podcast that is pleased it isn’t coming home as frankly the place is a mess and it would have been embarrassing for football to see it like this. I’m Tiernan Douieb and this week as Home Secretary and walking kick in the shins Priti Patel condemns those who sent abuse to England players after the Euros final, saying racism has no place in our country – I want to know, if that’s true, did the Home Office sponsor it for a special visa because it got settled status far quicker than most decent humans.

Football is unfortunately not coming home, though as England have never won the Euros it wouldn’t have been coming home in the first place, it’d have been arriving here from Europe to live for 3 years and the Home Office would no doubt have done its best to stop that from happening. Because the three players who did not score penalties were black, they have been subjected to horrific amounts of abuse online with several of humanities most useless wastes of skin saying it was because they took the knee. Except it’s the first time in 55 years the England team has made it to the final of a national tournament, and the team who won, Italy, also took the knee so if anything, combatting racism potentially really helps stretch the hamstrings and they should have been taking the knee in half time too and during every whistle blow. ‘Keep politics out of football’ often comes the cry of many who are racist towards non-white players, which is a type of politics that they use in football increasingly making it more political the instant they do. It’s also the fault of politicians, from former Health Secretary and man made from things you collect around the plug in the kitchen sink Matt Hancock, when last year in the early stages of the pandemic, he told footballers to do their bit. Then footballers successfully got kids the free school meals the government wouldn’t, supported tons of charities and just a few days ago said they’d give their Euros fee to the NHS heroes charity while also playing matches, therefore doing their bit as well as the government’s too while all the Conservatives seemed to manage during the pandemic were own goals while repeatedly moving goals posts to let their friend’s score. If politicians only did their jobs properly than footballers wouldn’t have to do any politics at all.

You will likely remember mere weeks ago the Prime Minister and mouse bitten broken punch bag Boris Johnson refused to condemn fans, if you can call them that, booing England players for taking the knee, but he did also say at the time he wanted the whole country behind them which makes me wonder if he’s confused football with panto this entire time and why he’s attended the matches looking like a toddler who’s been allowed to dress themselves that day. The Home Secretary Priti Patel said last month that fans have a right to boo and it was up to them, because the only human rights she’s ever keen to support are the ones that that allow people to make someone else feel shit. The right to seek refuge from torture and harm? Fuck that says Priti, seems a bit much. The right to yell abuse at someone doing their job or the right to snatch an ice cream from a baby or fling a puppy into a river, then she’s there with a placard demanding its safety in our national laws.

And I can see why the government felt booing England was ok. I mean, it must be threatening and strange for them to have seen someone like Gareth Southgate, doing well in his job because he’s had a lifetime of experience in it, whereas had the England manager been government appointed, they’d have gone for a pal who’d never heard of football but thought that they might once have seen one in a book in their grandfather’s mansion that was built by indentured servants. The Queen, you know, like if a raisin had a hat, sent Southgate a message praising him for his spirit, commitment and pride. Johnson must have been jealous as two of those qualities he could never dream of having and the first he only has in a cabinet in order to get him through Cobra meetings. The whole England team were actively campaigning against racism, helping kids in poverty and generally being lovely while also still gaining public support which ruins the Conservative ideology of treat ‘em mean keep ‘em keen and so of course they were quick to support the booing of anyone who might pop the bubble of nationwide Stockholm Syndrome we’re in. But by being anti-anti-racist, or as we used to say in the old days before all these new PC terms came in, racist, it poured sick on the sea of sick that formed into a big vomit tsunami by Sunday leading to England fans trashing central London with one putting a lit flare up his bum, the kind of distress signal that really describes Britain right now. Help, we are up our own arse and things are on fire. Police didn’t intervene but I suppose they had to judge if trouble was being caused and it was only men being aggressive and racist with their vandalism and no one was holding a candle or remembering a woman that was murdered so they didn’t need to step in. As I watched footage of hundreds of idiots storm into Wembley without tickets, I realised that this is us now, the country where the only way we could ever have a revolution was if we spread the word that there was free beer inside Westminster and it’ll run out if you don’t get in there quick. While the Prime Minister wrote his letter to the England manager saying that he and the team had lifted the spirits of the whole country, we all knew that thanks to the endless divisive culture war bullshit, the outcome of the game would either mean angry racist violent riots or happy racist violent riots.

England losing to penalties against Italy in the final should be a moment where everyone –  even people like me who do just think yes but it is just game and really not that important in the scheme of things – all say, what good boys they are and didn’t they do goddamn well, in-fact better than everyone else in the last 55 years. Instead, our nation thrives on disappointment and condemnation because that is all we know and continue to vote for. We can’t celebrate something actually going well if it doesn’t result in a trophy because that would demean all the celebrations we’ve been having about things that are completely useless and detrimental to the country. You can’t compare the successes of young people who also do so much for charity next to, say, the Festival of Brexit Britain otherwise it’ll make everyone realise the latter is spending a lot of money to cheer on the death of our agriculture sector and longer airport queues. Hey everyone, those boys are a British success just like the way we’ve contained Covid so there’s only tens of thousands of new infections every day. It somewhat punctures the winning image if part of it that has nothing to do with you is actually doing very well compared to your relentless bonfire of turds that you’ve put a bow on. Similarly, what if people realise that missing one penalty isn’t the worst thing in the entire world and is actually nowhere near as bad as letting 150,000 people die? Can you imagine how society might crumble? If it isn’t implicit that Marcus Rashford not scoring immediately wipes out him making untold amounts of children’s lives better, then people might ask question other elements of life and how will we function?

So of course, the Prime Minister now says the team deserve to be lauded as heroes, you know, just ones you boo obviously. He said shame on you to those who said racisms and that they should crawl back under a rock, which I guess is where they live in-between football and voting Conservative and really sheds light on the housing crisis right now. Maybe they are racist out of tiredness as they have no bed to sleep in, yeah? And the Home Secretary says she is disgusted by the racist abuse online because preferably she likes to save it for real life when shoving people on a plane at midnight with no legal representation. I’ll give both the smallest benefit of doubt though, because how on earth are they supposed to know that actions have consequences when absolutely none of theirs so far have? There’s no way saying people can do racisms will come back to bite them when having meetings that breached national security while you’re meant to be holiday has just resulted in a bigger job.

It’s why Covid restrictions will be lifted next week and the Health Secretary and cruel lovechild of Ernie and Bert Sajid Javid has said that doing that is the most responsible thing they could do. Which I suppose it is, if you consider that they are completely incapable of doing anything even vaguely more responsible than the worst thing you can imagine. Which is of course, missing a penalty. It’s not the end of the road, said Javid, but the start of a new phase of continued caution while we live with the virus. We’ve all had some pretty awful flatmates before but this is the same as willingly letting a serial killer lodge at your home and then saying its best to be cautious so let’s leave all the doors unlocked and our favourite knives out on display. Javid has already said that at current restrictions we’ll be at 100,000 infections a day by August, so clearly the incentive to scrap all the remaining precautions is to try and beat that number until everyone in the UK has Covid which will save us as you definitely can’t get it if you’ve already got it or are dead. It’s very much a close your eyes and maybe it’ll go away tactic, with the government hoping that if no one gives Covid the oxygen of publicity it’ll go away and start a tik tok channel instead. There is no risk-free way forward apparently so may as well do all the risks all at once. Fuck it, why not send everyone a mandatory dangerous scorpion to carry around as well because if you don’t carry one now, when will you? Maybe also make sure you’re transporting cyanide tablets with your mouth when you travel or juggle knives with your eyes closed, because there’s no risk-free way of doing those so you may as well go all out and do them. While the government are taking all the risks, they also want you to know that personally it’s up to you not to as they will be being personally careful while sitting in their chauffer driven cars. It’s expected that people wear face masks in crowded indoor spaces, but then it’s also expected that the government are vaguely competent, and they haven’t ever managed that. All the government ever do is base policies on the expectations that people will be more responsible than they are, forgetting that these are the people that voted them in in the first place and will willingly put flares up their bum. Of course, Boris Johnson says the plan is reasonable and balanced, but from him, a man that has never managed to be either of those things, you do have to translate that as means cheap and on very precarious tightrope.

If you’re double jabbed or under 18 you won’t have to self-isolate if you get pinged but don’t have symptoms. That is from August 16^th though so it’s possible the real plan is that between now and then everyone will either be ill and unable to go out, or be told to self-isolate and that way it’s not a national lockdown but many independent ones which by allowing means the government are actually empowering the people you see? From August the 16^th, the double jabbed and under 18 will be able to do what they like while 18–30-year-olds will have to stay in, presumably as a clever idea to keep them safe so that when everyone who owns property has died off then they can emerge and actually have a life again. If your 18^th birthday is in August it’ll be the first year you’ll be able to celebrate by being told you can’t go to the pub. Or anywhere at all. The fully vaxxed also won’t need to quarantine after travelling to a country on the amber list, which means only 20% of 18–29-year-olds will be able to take benefit of that. Luckily, they can’t afford to go on holiday anyway after the last year or probably ever again, so we’ll just have to rely on the older generations doing their tour of duty and getting to relax for everyone after their stressful year of gardening or getting mortgage breaks and hope that they are thoughtful enough to bring variants back for everyone as a souvenir.

Its why Transport Secretary and a man who can be aptly described by the noise ‘SIGH’ Grant Shapps, has decided that the best solution to the problem of our current shortage of heavy goods vehicle drivers is just to let the ones that will do it, do longer hours so they can do more. Yes, great plan Shapples and definitely no way that’ll cause any problems. It just means the drivers that are left can drop off one by one due to sleep depraved crashes, until there is only one lorry driver left and they can become king lorry and never sleep again, roaming the motorways like a remake of Duel. The lorry shortages are entirely caused by the heady combo of Brexit and Covid, but rather than fix those things it’s easier to wipe out all lorry drivers too, after which they’ll be able to blame British people for being too lazy to lug their own fresh fruit and veg across the channel and down the M1 all by themselves twice a week. As we know, not all those things are the government’s fault though as we are expected to dodge covid particles on our own while also being told to go back to work and Brexit not going to a plan that wasn’t there, as we all know is the fault of the negotiators who worked under former Prime Minister and woman made of coat hangers Theresa May.

That’s what Lord David Frost, a man who I think has now been slowly collapsing for a thousand years, says, so it must be true. Like when he said the Northern Ireland Protocol that he signed and Johnson said was the best deal ever, was something the EU needed to fix. Well now they don’t as its to do with the negotiators that didn’t negotiate that bit, and instead got a deal that might’ve worked better had Johnson not scrapped it. Urgh, how stupid and inconsiderate of them. If only they could’ve done a shit stupid deal that had Boris Johnson’s name on it then maybe he’d have totally gone with it. They really should’ve been able to predict the future better and it’s entirely their fault for not being trained soothsayers. The EU have now asked for that £40bn that Johnson in the past said if they wanted it, they could go whistle, presumably because based on much of his and his cabinet’s behaviour, that’s the only noise that they respond to. It’s a legal obligation that the UK pay this sum but of course Johnson has said he doesn’t recognise it, though that is because he never sees amounts of money that big as its usually donors that pay it for him.

Speaking of which, an inquiry into Johnson’s holiday to Mustique a couple of Christmases ago has concluded that Johnson’s account of who paid for it was accurate and complete, but he got a telling off for not providing details earlier. YEAH THAT’S HIM DONE! HE’S TOTES GONNA HAVE TO RESIGN NOW… Oh no sorry, it means absolutely nothing has happened and everyone is cool that he got favours by a Carphone Warehouse donor and there’s no questions as to how that might affect any government policies and when there is a big bill to make sure everyone buys massive brick like carphones again even if they don’t have a car everyone will just go ‘oh wonder where that idea came from maybe it’s good?’ and we’ll all carry on in stupid land. Because there are no concerns about consequences for this lot, and if you behave like a total irresponsible arsehole after hearing the government cheer you from the side lines, then it’s your fault for not doing what was expected. This week Johnson will make a speech about levelling up and uniting the country, which is expert level trolling and will only make sense if he’s intending to bring people together in big brawl on Parliament Square where he can sneak off Sersei style and go fly to a Caribbean island till its all over. Paid for by Blockbuster Video or Woolworths probably. These psychological blame games the government play, or accidentally play – no one really knows – that they play with the country are the kind of emotional abuse that would only be good if you were hoping to get a whole nation into professional ice skating. But still, at least they’ve never missed a penalty right?

Labour leader and industrial storage locker unit Keir Starmer has told Boris Johnson that he has failed the test of leadership, which is probably because if there is one the Prime Minister would’ve paid someone else to do it for him. Though Starmer would probably fail the theory. Starmer said inactions of leaders have consequences which he must personally know to be true as he’s barely done anything for a year apart from attack his own party. Actually, that’s not completely correct as this week the opposition party decided they would play the Conservatives at their own game and actively reinstated Trevor Phillips, no not the one from Grand Theft Auto 5, that’d be acceptable. I mean the one that has the facial expression of someone always trying to suppress wind and who was suspended from the party for Islamophobic comments saying that Muslims were ‘not like us’ which is only not racist if he’s an alien. Phillips was reinstated without the National Executive Committee knowing, or the Muslim investigator who was looking into the claims made against him and hasn’t yet concluded them, and it all happened before the Batley and Spen vote, but conveniently it wasn’t announced till afterwards, one week before Phillips started his new Sunday morning politics show. Labour have called for the government to take responsibility for racist abuse spurred on by their comments, so maybe they’re just hoping the Conservatives will take the flak for their members too.

In other news, the Chancellor and rejected Aardman creation Rishi Sunak is scrapping the £20 Universal Credit uplift that many people now rely on, in the Autumn ‘saying it was always intended to be a temporary measure’ because I guess you can’t have people actually affording to pay bills and eat forever or it just gets dull. I’m not saying it’s a terrible decision, but even former Work and Pensions Secretary and angry thumb Iain Duncan Smith has said Sunak needs to rethink it, and he’s someone who would tell people they were fit for work even if they’d died because at least they could be someone’s draught excluder. Sunak says that going forward the best way to help people in poverty is to get them into work and make sure those jobs are well paid, but as there aren’t many of those places right now and the furlough is about to end I feel like this is trying to help people deal with flooding by taking away their flood defences now and promising in the future the nearby lake will disappear from climate change so they should be grateful. Sunak is exactly the type of parent who’ll tell his kids they can’t have a toy as its too expensive and then take them with him to buy his 15^th Porsche. There may also be changes to triple lock pensions which is meant to rise by 8% next year but Sunak has hinted it could be cut, which I think is a great idea but mainly because that’ll kill off their voter base. The Chancellor says it will be based on fairness for pensioners and taxpayers, which are often the same thing unless you’re Sunak and all the pensioners you know live in tax havens.

The terrifyingly authoritarian Policing Bill has passed its third reading in the Commons with all 357 Conservatives voting to allow police to arrest protesters if they are too noisy and annoying. On the plus side, they should hopefully be able to arrest the Prime Minister during the first PMQs after it reaches royal assent. Well, I’m definitely going to call them to complain about someone being loud and irritating anyway. The Nationality and Borders Bill was also introduced last week, which if and when its passed will make it illegal to arrive knowingly in the UK without permission, but I reckon there’ll be a loophole if anyone seeking asylum gets wasted just before they reach shore and blacks out, that way they can claim they have no idea where they are or how they got there but it was a proper laugh and should get away with it. Especially if they’re wearing an England shirt. Conservative MP and mythical creature children are told lives in a well Andrew Bridgen said that the bill was necessary as the indigenous population of the UK are not tolerating immigration anymore. Who’s the indigenous population? Does he mean him because he certainly looks like the product of many years of inbreeding and a lack of evolution. Think it’d have done his family really well to get bonked by a viking but they probably assumed the Bridgens were trolls and steered clear. Bridgen is actually married to a Serbian immigrant, so either he’s so thick he thinks Serbia are the bits just on the edges of a city or it could just be that he’s thoroughly unhappy and hoping this will be cheaper for him than a divorce.

Lastly, the UK may soon ban boiling lobsters alive as government ministers acknowledge that crustaceans and molluscs are sentient beings too. Of course they have a lot of sympathy for spinless grabby creatures who struggle when in hot water. And man who despite all his money still looks like someone haphazardly peeled the skin off a dead lion Richard Branson has won the billionaire space race by flying in his rocket plane 53 miles above the Earth. Well I suppose he had to didn’t he, as that’s the only place left where he’s not a tax exile.

ADMIN

Howdy ParPolBrods. How are you getting on in this, the week after England lost more things? I’m being a dick as honestly, I couldn’t give a shit about football, even though I think all the current team seem like awesome humans. But I felt I should watch because the world was and spent the whole time complaining that it was going on too long. My big problem, which I may have said before on this show, is that you go through all the anxiety and stress, and then you still have to go through it all again the next tournament. It never ends. Even if you win it, your team still has to win it again, and again, and again. I’m just saying, maybe the way to stop the violence, aggression and stupidness is just have one big final match and then whoever’s won has won and whoever’s lost has lost and then move on. Yeah? Who’s with me? No one? Sigh. I hope you aren’t too sad about it all and haven’t had any racists fire flares out of their bum near you. Which incidentally is something brilliant clown comedian Chris Lynam who was part of Malcolm Hardee’s greatest show on legs back in the day, and he always ended his sets by putting a flare in his bum and firing it off. I have seen it up far too close and it is both impressive and horrifying. I have also heard the story about when it exploded and he had to go to A&E and I never want to hear that again. I’m just saying we all think that England fan was an idiot thug but it could be he’s a practiced clown trying to recruit other fans into unsuspecting culture…no, I know it’s not that. Sometimes I just like to pretend people are better than they are. Sigh. Anyway, I will keep this brief as I’m doing this show laaaaate today as I’ve been teaching primary school kids stand-up all morning which was immensely fun and I have had great insight into how irritating many 10 year olds find it when their grown ups shout their name for dinner and they come down and dinner isn’t ready. Trust me, that would come top in the big issues they care about in that age group.

So big time thanks this week to Ben and Melissa for joining the Patreon of no extra benefits. None, apart from the message I send you to say thanks which you will get because I’m not ungrateful, no no. If you fancy helping this show out with a quid or 400 then you can join the patreon.com/parpolbro and enjoy knowing I will very, very rarely send you extra content because that is rewarding people who have money and feels at odds with the whole ethos of this show, is what I say to cover up the fact I’m lazy and can’t be bothered to make more things. You can also do the ko-fi and Acast supporter site too but I’m trying this all guns for the patreon site right now to sort of have you all in one place and then should I do extra content ever I won’t have to try to work out how to add it to two sites. Oh my life. Thanks also to Wocket1 for the very lovely Apple Podcasts review and ta to all of you who’ve given the pod a plug on your socials in the past week as well.

So lovely news, the El Gavez family who I mentioned last week had been detained at Yarl’s Wood because the home office lost their papers, they have been released and are back now with the family of listeners to this show who were putting them up. Hooray, nice things do happen even if its bloody awful they had to go through that in the first place. Any other awful breach of human rights or even lesser ones that I can help with by mentioning it here or sticking a link to a petition on the podcast blurb, then get in touch. It is the least I can do. I mean actually the least. On the scale of political activism, it’s a small sign on the box the scale came in.

Next week will be the last pod for at least a month, maybe more. I’m hoping there’ll be a guest on it but it’s looking sketchy because, as you’ve all realised, people have lives again goddamnit. Not me, just all the other people. I’m considering some changes for when this podcast returns after the break with maybe interviews not being every week now that its trickier to arrange them, and making some shows just the comedy bit. Sound good? Great thanks I’m glad you agree. No seriously, if you don’t agree or have some fantastic other suggestion like ‘why not do it all in mime?’ or ‘give up!’ then get in touch.

On this week’s show I’ve got a guest I’ve been meaning to interview for ages, defence writer and ex-soldier Joe Glenton about our war fetishizing society and in the middle a wee bit about some bills you might have missed. Not gas ones, I mean political ones. I’m not just going to let you know your car tax is overdue. But it might be. Best to check incase. Even if you don’t have a car.

INTERVIEW WITH JOE PART 1

We all know what war is good for, thanks to Edwin Starr and living through whichever pointless ideological violent outburst that applies to your decade. But despite it clearly not being a good thing, British culture is still intent on comparing everything to it or treating it as one. There’s the culture war which isn’t a war because only one side are fighting it and culture was killed off by Covid anyway. There’s the pandemic which has so far seen people adopt the Blitz spirit because apparently in the Blitz they bought all the toilet roll and pasta, and according to Johnson lockdown was like being in captivity in a POW camp, if you know, they’d had Netflix. Then all the Brexit talk was full of WW2 analogies, there’s the war on poverty, the war on drugs which won’t work as all the casualties are having a great time, the war on terror which will never end till Halloween is cancelled and Warren G who hasn’t made any new tunes in years. Everyone has to wear a bigger and bigger poppy for Remembrance Day to distract from the reality of many people being sent to their death, and of course every politician supports the troops and the veterans by waving lots of flags and encouraging everyone to donate to charities that support them because Westminster can’t be bothered. Is that actually what veterans want though? Or would a better thanks for serving in the army be measures to curb poverty, proper mental health care for PTSD concerns and employment opportunities for young people once they leave? Of course, I’m being silly, who needs that when look a flag again and its really big this time. Wavy, wavy. Considering the war rhetoric, we’re surrounded by, exactly how does it translate to actually looking after those who’ve been on the frontline? What exactly is in the armed forces bill and how exactly would you fight culture anyway if you aren’t willing to have a dance off?

This week I spoke to Defence writer Joe Glenton. Joe was a British soldier for six years, serving in Afghanistan – a war that British troops are only now being pulled out from 20 years later –  before Joe bravely and admirably refused to serve a second term, having to spend five months in military prison for going Awol. Since then he has been a powerful anti-war activist and written extensively about the realities of our military system and the treatment of veterans, with his new book Veteranhood: Rage and Hope In British Ex-Military Life coming out in November. I’ve been wanting to get Joe on this podcast for a while and it was great to be able to ask him all about just who politicians are doing their pro-veteran soundbites for, what support veterans actually need and just what we should be concerned about in the Armed Forces bill. Hope you enjoy, here is Joe:

INTERVIEW WITH JOE PART 1:

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

MIDDLE BIT – BILLS BILLS BILLS

We will pay for terrible bills, cos MPs vote for terrible bills, many people they will kill, Tories maybe just chill. Yes, loads of bills have been and are being rushed through parliament like a meal of refried beans through your bowels the day after, and often in content and as well as temperament. Here this week is a super speedy run down of three bigguns like Christopher that you might have missed but that definitely won’t miss you as you suddenly find you’re being arrested for helping someone escape a war or for protesting because your passport isn’t enough ID to let you vote as it doesn’t have a stamp saying you’ve donated to the Conservative Party on it. But its ok because Richard Branson will be dictating your healthcare from his new space palace where he somehow pays reverse tax and gets given money by the moon. Probably.

The Policing Bill was passed with just two days of debate about it last week, despite being a 300-page document. But hey, having seasoned debate with a majority Conservative government about a bill that is entirely detrimental to democratic and human rights is the same as thinking it’s worth persuading a zombie through reasoned argument about your basic rights to keep your own brain and not have them chomp on it. There are bits of the Policing Bill that are good including longer sentences for domestic abuse, of which cases have risen dramatically during lockdown, there is also ton of legislation that could see you arrested because your protest is too loud. How loud is too loud? Well its whatever is deemed annoying so if you’re whispering but some numpty feels its rattling their bum into unclenching and feels threatening then the coppers could get you. It is strange that the government have decided the criminal type they need to clamp down on, alongside domestic abusers, are the people who say ‘what do we want’ ‘when do we want it’ into a loudhailer. I don’t think they’re very similar but then this is a government who can’t take criticism and I often wonder if as a child Priti Patel was told by a teacher that her colouring in wasn’t good enough and she tried to have them thrown in a cell. Amnesty International have called this bill a calculated attack on our bedrock basic rights, as in founding ones, not ones that were in the Flintstones. The quote goes on to say you’d expect to see the new policing powers in the pages of a novel about a future dystopian Britain. I disagree but only about the future bit. It’d definitely be set in the present day. It is odd that Britain has come to the aid of and offered asylum to people in Hong Kong because of the oppression of protestors by authorities and will now be welcoming them to Britain where it’ll be much the same. Maybe they’re going out of their way to make Hong Kong ex-pats feel at home? It is a scary bill and it will now go to the Lords where they could make changes before it becomes law but chances are high it’ll go through as it is and we’re all going to have to work out how to do protests in mime. Let’s see police remove me with ease from this imaginary hovering static briefcase I’ve handcuffed myself to. You just try.

The second bill is the Elections Bill which is a bit about bringing in Voter ID, which will very quickly stop a whole bunch of people from being able to vote and will also mean even more people will laugh at your shitty passport photo than just the people in the airport. At least when they laugh and you can escape to an entire different country to get over it. That is worrying but even more concerning than the undemocratic bits are the really undemocratic bits that stop the Electoral Commission from being able to do, well anything, and allows ministers to change the terms of what campaigning means which could allow for more foreign interference in our elections and dark money donations that could then influence policies. On the plus side, it could mean if we all send letters to more democratic countries for desperate help, I reckon we could get them all to spend millions on helping the Monster Raving Loonies win for once and it’d finally change the game. The laws will also put limits on unions, groups, charities and individuals deemed to anything considered to be ‘intended for a common purpose’ which will basically block them out of the election process and could mess up things for well, anyone but the Tories as they could make processes illegal that opposition parties need for organising like booking a meeting room. Again, the only good thing is it will make work more fun for many of you if you can get anyone arrested who books a meeting room. I don’t think it’ll work like that but hey, we’ve got to find some joy in this misery so you may as well try.

So that’s nearly all political opposition quashed in two bills and thirdly is the Nationality and Borders Bill which says it cracks down on human traffickers, but actually changes the terms so anyone climbing asylum can now be criminalised which breaks the Geneva Convention, the sort of thing that might cause other countries to be concerned and then maybe, hopefully, they’ll invade us in order to restore democracy and Priti Patel would have to flee in a boat. That would be karma at its best. What the bill does in many places is adds extra complexity and well, horrible shittiness, to bits of the already terrible, inadequate and often inhumane asylum system. But that is how Conservatives work isn’t it? By taking something terrible and somehow making it so much worse you miss it when it was just shitty.

Three bills that all work together to make one decepticon combiner, sorry, I mean a shitty trilogy up there with the Star Wars prequels, and which equally attack human rights and well-being. What can we do about it? Well soon we won’t be able to protest unless it’s in stealth mode, so its write to your MP time, sign all the petitions you can and get practicing to hold placards while dressed like a ninja and climbing a lamppost. Or we just all dress up in football shirts and make as much noise as possible then trash things and chances are we’ll get the Home Secretary cheering alongside us while the police get lunch.

And now back to Joe…

INTERVIEW WITH JOE PART 2

As I said, I’ve been meaning to get Joe on this show for ages so great to be able to chat with him. Joe’s book ‘Veteranhood: Rage and Hope In Ex-Military Life’ will be out in November but you can pre-order it now from all book retailing spaces virtual and real. In the meantime you can grab his first book from 2013, ‘Soldier Box: Why I Won’t Return To The War On Terror’ and you can follow Joe on Twitter @joejglenton and find a lot of his articles on many sites too. You can find ForcesWatch at forceswatch.net, on Twitter @forceswatch and their podcast is called Warrior Nation.

After next week the show is on a wee break but don’t let that dissuade you from endlessly getting in touch with your recommendations for guests to a point where it’s almost annoying but not quite. And of course, you can do that @parpolbro on twitter, the Partly Political Broadcast group on Facebook, the contact page at partlypoliticalbroadcast.co.uk or email me at partlypoliticalbroadcast@gmail.com. Or you could….

END

And that is all for this week’s Partly Political Broadcast podcast. Next week is the last episode before a summer break and by that I mean probably about two weeks before I then have to do a podcast again to talk about lockdown 4. Sorry, optimism I mean. It’ll be back next week whatever happens unless a goblin materialises into my room and steals my microphone just as I’m about to record. But hopefully that won’t happen. See? There’s the optimism. So goblin dependent I’ll be in your ears then but till that time, why not recommend this podcast to anyone you think might like it, give it a review or even join the patreon and show how much you like it by donating a small amount of money that I could use for bills, condiments or just to try and balance it on a lemon on a bucket of water?

Big yeah graciases to Acast, my brother The Last Skeptik and Kat Day.

This will be back next week when Sajid Javid has to be tackled to the ground by police after lobbing a dog into the Thames and setting fire to a child’s bike while shouting ‘if not now, then when?’

BYEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

This week’s show was sponsored by keep football out of politics, a new campaign to insure ministers never mention football in their politics ever again and just stick to what they’re good at: lying and failed promises. No more pretending what your favourite team is, no more wearing a suit jacket over your team shirt, no more complaining that badgers have moved the goalposts. Let politics be the game of politics with its racist fans and flag waving and leave football alone.

Transcript

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