The Sunak Family’s Excessive Dough – Spring Statement, cost of living crisis and Kate Hudson at CND on how there are no small nukes

Released on Tuesday, March 29th, 2022.

The Sunak Family’s Excessive Dough – Spring Statement, cost of living crisis and Kate Hudson at CND on how there are no small nukes

The Chancellor Rishi Sunak says wants to help people so has announced a whole raft of measures that won’t really help anyone. Although, maybe, in a way, isn’t that helping us all to band together in the understanding that he’s massively rubbish? With any luck Michael Gove will accidentally put him in a bin bag while litter collecting for Britain. Tiernan is currently down with the ‘vids so some very snotty jokes and a chat with Kate Hudson (@kate4peace2021) the CEO of CND UK (@CNDUk) about why there’s no such thing as ‘small nukes’.

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THIS EPISODE IS TAGGED WITH: • Boris Johnson, Brexit, Comedy, Conservatives, Keir Starmer, Labour, No Deal, parliament, parpolbro, Partly Political Broadcast, Patreon, podcast, political, politics, PPE, Priti Patel, Rishi Sunak, satire, stand-up, The Last Skeptik, Tiernan Douieb, virus

Transcript

Hello and welcome to the Partly Political Broadcast, the comedy politics podcast who has never had a rise in interest rates despite many attempts at trying. I’m Tiernan Douieb and this week as we enter the fifth week of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the Prime Minister and ‘oh no all that foam stuffing has landed in that ambergris’ Boris Johnson says he’s not optimistic that Russian President and animated sausage patty Vladimir Putin wants peace, I am so glad we have a leader with such insight. What other gems of intelligence can we expect from a mind like Johnsons? Maybe he’ll inform us that he’s thought about it and he’s not sure that the Isreali government is all that keen on being a good neighbour or that he’s put in the research, and he really can’t be 100% that the Taliban celebrate international women’s day.

Usually, the first signs of Spring are welcomed by everyone. Warmer temperatures, blossom, daffodils looking like tiny, sunny demogorgons. So, it says a lot about the Chancellor and ‘oooh, donkey from Shrek has had his hair done nice’ Rishi Sunak that his Spring Statement only felt seasonal in so much as it woke a lot of people up from a hibernation sleep to smell that it’s not coffee brewing but a nationwide cost of living crisis. Which luckily keeps you as alert as coffee and therefore makes a good replacement when you can no longer afford to buy any beans or boil the kettle. Sunak insisted that he wants to help people now because you know, he’s a good guy and just like you, if you had a very powerful job and were stupidly rich. Yet it’s hard to know what his idea of help is unless, burdened with millions and millions of pounds of wealth he’s realised that money can’t buy you love, and so by sparing the general public from having any, maybe they will be able to enjoy their lives and find romance? It’s obvious Sunak and his wife don’t talk much in their relationship or he’d be aware that she has shares in a company with offices in Moscow and has links to a now sanctioned Russian bank. But as Sunak said, he is an elected politician and his wife is not, so I guess fuck it, that means Putin could be slipping her M&S gift cards on the sly it wouldn’t matter as she’s not in office right? And Sunak definitely wouldn’t be using any of that money for his own benefit as he’s too busy living a life of luxury after making it from the financial crash of 2008. Just last month the Chancellor urged firms to think very carefully about their investments made in Russia and how they might aid Putin, but he didn’t directly say ‘oh and also my wife should’ so at least he’s not a hypocrite. And as Sunak revealed he is just like you because while many people are not even accepting potatoes from food banks as they can’t afford the energy to boil them, the Chancellor’s family, gosh this is just so normal everyday stuff right, they all have different breads in his house! What are they like? I’m not sure which of his 12 houses he means, but if it’s all of them that is quite a lot of bread and I suppose you’d only be really able to afford that through immoral banking investments so it does make sense. It was seen to be out of touch that Sunak was boasting about his family’s excessive dough when others have none, but actually it’s the first thing he’d said all week that made me optimistic as bread is one of the top ten choking hazard foods. See? He does know what the people want.

Only Conservatives can be trusted with taxpayers money said the Chancellor, but didn’t confirm what they were trusted to do with it. If it’s let a load of it get taking in fraudulent pandemic claims and never be recouped, or spend £122m of it on a firm linked to a Tory peer to secure PPE that didn’t work and only cost them £46m to get hold of, then yes, that is what I trust them to do with it. I fully assume that like with stocks or other investment things that clever people do, if you had the option of putting your money in a Conservative Party ISA, you’d get a pop up making sure that you understand the risks are higher than anything else as there’s a good chance they’ll give it all to their friend who swears they can provide carbon reducing initiatives because they once opened a window after lighting a candle. And then you won’t receive your money back until the poorest members of society have repaid it all by not surviving the winter in what will be rebranded as a national tribute to Scott of the Antarctic. Inflation keeps soaring, but the Chancellor, because he’s just like you, knows how to help. Firstly, he announced there would be a 5p per litre duty cut on fuel, which is the biggest cut to fuel duty ever, which is a lot like saying ‘we’ve been making you all pay more on this than you should for years now’. Petrol prices have gone up by 40p since Sunak’s last Spring Statement in 2021, so cutting 5p off that so they’re still 35p more per litre than this time last year is just too generous and we can all be grateful as still can’t afford to drive anywhere but you know, slightly less unaffordably than a week ago. Don’t have a car? What’s wrong with you? You must be in the poorest fifth of households and if you really wanted to help the country you’d use the money you don’t have for heating or eating to go buy a car you then can’t afford to drive much. Normal people, like Rishi, drive cars you see, which is why everyone got to see a lovely picture of him filling up a Kia Rio with petrol in a supermarket petrol station, grinning as he enjoys knowing he’s only being exploited by 35p per litre more than it should be to pollute the planet. But it turns out that wasn’t everyday Rishi’s car, but one he borrowed from a Sainsburys shop assistant. Is it because the Chancellor has no idea how to fill up his own car as his chauffer usually does that? Or was it because by putting in exactly £10 to the penny of petrol in the car, he knew he was actually helping a single member of the public with the cost of living and could go back to asking his driver to take him round fourteen different artisan bakeries for the family lunch pick up without any guilt? Footage showed Sunak try to pay with the contactless card at the counter and get confused, which is odd as not only should the man in charge of the country’s finances know how major elements of banking work, but also much of his career has revolved around having zero contact with the consequences of his actions so you’d think he’d be a fan. It is remarkable how only a few years ago the BBC posted an animated video depicting Rishi Sunak as superman yet in reality he’d struggle to know how to get into a phonebox and wait around for hours outside for someone else to dress him. Not only that but on hearing a distress call, he’d likely just turn up and tell them he can’t help everyone actually before buggering off again.

The second big announcement in the Spring Statement was a 5% VAT relief on homeowners who want to install energy saving materials, so nothing helps someone like me know that I could be aided with a collapse into poverty if I just bought a house and some solar panels. Thanks Rishi! I mean fair play for even bothering to come up with anything when he could’ve just stood up there and said it really helps if you just imagine you were rich and everytime you’re cold think about being on a tropical island. There was a promise that income tax would be cut by 1p at some point in the next two years if the criteria is filled mumble mumble just remember the headline and we might bring it back just before an election so you won’t remember how expensive everything is. There is an increase to the National Insurance tax threshold which will only help people who already have top and middle tier incomes and he kept taking about how his government are reducing taxes all the while they’re rising them, so I can only assume that by making so many people so poor they won’t have energy to work they’ll be taken out of the tax bracket altogether. This is how the unemployment figures work. Unemployment is forecast to be lower every year for the next three years but it only classes those looking for work as that and only for the first six weeks that they do. So, if you’ve failed to get a job for ages, unable to work, caring for a family member or died in the pandemic, then you’re not unemployed at all, you’re just, I dunno, job deficient. Or dead. Either way, well done on your productivity and you won’t believe the tax reductions you’ll have gained as a result.

There’s £500m of new funding to the Household Support Fund which means if you’re in a vulnerable household and may be affected worst by the rising costs, then you can apply for a grant from your council that they might pay in vouchers as though they couldn’t be bothered to work out what you actually wanted for your birthday and were worried you’d spend cash on something you might actually need. The Shadow Secretary of State for Work and Pensions and background Beano character Johnathan Ashworth was heard shouting ‘is that it?’ as the Chancellor reeled off a lack of help for anyone other than Conservative voters, a phrase that could often had been shouted at him during his time as Shadow Health Secretary where he’d often say he wouldn’t repeal any of the Conservatives’ damaging Health and Social Care Act. But he was right, there just wasn’t really anything at all in the Chancellor’s mini-budget. The Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves who always sounds like a before advert for a nasal spray, said that the country can’t afford the Conservatives, which was a nice line but I can’t help but feel many of the oppositions complete lack of better ideas mean we’d just be getting much the same thing but with the promise there’ll now be 5p off these highly unaffordable politicians. Currently Labour are blaming the last leadership for making them so reliant on funding from members which has really ruined their rich donor investment. Yes, it’s a real shame that for a while we had a political party that wasn’t backed by mysterious lobbyists isn’t it? Still I’m sure all those oligarchs will be looking for another group to invest in now the Conservatives have to pretend it’s not on anymore and Rishi Sunak’s wife won’t tell him anything about it. Rachel Reeves’s nice line in her reponse about people not affording the Conservatives was undermined by a bizarre tangent about Sunak obviously being inspired by characters from Alice in Wonderland, which can’t be true as if he took after the Mad Hatter he’d actually be more likely to put a cap on prices.

The Resolution Foundation says that the Spring Statement announcements are going to put a further 1.3m people in Britain into poverty, including 500,000 children but at least all those kids won’t have the stress of working out which bread they want to have today if they can’t have any right? 7 out of 8 workers will pay more tax, which the Conservatives can then be trusted to splash on probably some giant bouncy castle in the shape of Winston Churchill that will then have the contract given to a friend who once blew up a balloon without help from the butler and it’ll be deemed a health hazard and closed before it opens. Typical British households will lose £1100 a year but you won’t able to say that Johnson’s government hasn’t motivated people to shed pounds. The Chancellor has been widely condemned by, well, everyone including members of his own party and they’ve admitted that benefit rises will take 18 months to catch up with inflation, which is obvs fine because human beings, as we know, can go without food for 18 months like a very pale camel. The government have already delayed their energy security strategy and there’s talks that Rishi Sunak may have to u-turn on some of this, maybe at least the cost of energy bills, or the country could plunge into an even worse cost of living crisis. The question is, would be use his own car to u-turn in, or borrow someone else’s so it looks more real?

MPs voted 302 to 232, and you can almost certainly guess which of them were in which parties, in favour of the nationality and borders bill which includes measures for offshore detention centres, criminal sentences for people seeking asylum in the UK and stripping people of their citizenship. All of which definitely sounds pretty barbaric but I can’t help but wonder if once people escape war or persecution and then arrive in Britain and see the state of things, they might be desperate to go almost anywhere else. I mean at least in prison or a detention centre, someone else will cover their heating costs. There is something so horribly British about punishing people for seeking a better life and it has been confirmed that this bill would cover Ukrainians coming to the UK that don’t use the recommended not very safe and overly complicated safe routes. You do have to wonder which side of the war effort we’re supporting when our government is super keen to create our own PoWs.

The CEO of P&O Ferries Peter Hebblethwaite, who looks not unlike a large crashed ship, admitted to a panel of MPs that his firm broke the law in the way it sacked 800 workers without consulting the unions. Both the Prime Minister and the Transport Secretary Grant Shapps with his forever appearance of a disgraced children’s TV presenter, have both called for Hebblethwaite to resign and said that they cannot believe that he can stay in that role after breaking the law. Really? Why does that upset you both so much? Is it because after displaying those qualities you now realise he’d be perfect in the cabinet? Actually, I say that, but as awful a shitbag as Hebblethwaite is, he did also tell the truth at the parliamentary panel which means he’d fail at the first interview. It turns out though that in 2018, former Minister for immense failure and man with a paracetamol capsule for a head which is at odds with his existence being a constant headache Chris Grayling might have changed the laws so the P&O Ferries were registered abroad and therefore could sack who they like without any notice. Shapps says he will close the loopholes that allow this to happen. Good, I mean how dare someone change their identity in order to break the law and lose transport workers jobs, when there’s already a transport secretary who excels in all of that?

The government are preparing a push for new nuclear power plants in Britain, but the problem is that there is currently nowhere to safely and permanently deposit the toxic waste that would be created. What about the rivers and seas? That way it’ll clean off all the shit that’s currently in there. Actually, I think nothing would represent Britain more accurately right now than containing a whole load of unnecessary toxicity that has nowhere to go. The Education Minister and what if Walter White had even fewer morals Nadhim Zahawi has announced plans for a longer school week to improve children’s learning and it will, as they’ll definitely gain a much greater understanding of failed educational policies. Zahawi says he wants to spread the DNA of grammar schools, which I thought was what Boris Johnson spent a lot of his time doing. When faced during a Sky News interview, with a graph of the funding gap of per pupil spending in state schools compared to those in private schools during the 12 years of Conservative government, Zahawi said it’s what had to be done to fix the economy. Makes sense though, as if none of those kids learned maths properly they won’t be able to work out that that absolutely none of it was worth it.

Face that could launch a thousand shits and housing and communities secretary Michael Gove has launched the great British Spring Clean, asking people to level up their local area by picking up litter councils now can’t afford to hire people to do. By litter, I mean rubbish, not the latest batch of offspring produced by the Prime Minister. If levelling up means getting rid of rubbish in a public place, then at least that bodes well for the next election.

ADMIN

Oh god, how was that? Was there jokes in it? Did any of it make sense? I know I should know, but I’m currently down with the vids aka all Omicronned in my face and feel to quote Blak Twang, so rotten. I mean I’m not officially Omicronned. I’m on day 5 of feeling an absolute state with all the tick box symptoms of the ‘vids – I FELL ASLEEP BY ACCIDENT – but my Lat Flow tests keep gaslighting me and saying its negative. Which apparently could just mean that I’m a totally amazing selfless guy whose keeping all this infectioness to myself and refuses to pass it on. No wait. Maybe that’s selfish as I don’t want to share? Either way my wife and daughter, sorry agent, don’t have it so maybe I’m shielding them from it and that’s a much better way to protect my family than slapping Chris Rock. Right? So I can honestly say I have little idea of what I’m saying and doing, consumed in an all-encompassing brain fog and so please do feel free to get in touch if I’ve said anything that made absolutely zero sense and I’ll read your email 400 times and still not take it in.

Recorded early on a lemsip high – probably loads of news I’ll have missed. Laura Kuenssberg – you might notice I haven’t mentioned Ukraine much because its ever changing and I can’t wrap my head round it, but there is a chat with Kate Hudson at CND all about nuclear war, just to cheer us up. You’re welcome.

How are you after the Spring Statement? All excited about the savings you’ll make on the solar panels for your mansion? The day after it was all announced our landlords upped our rent because apparently they have to, as they can’t pay their mortgage off enough times and its not fair or something, then my agent’s nursery upped their fees because to be fair, all the food and their bills have gone up and then our home contents insurance went up even though I’ve just cleared out some stuff so actually have less things than last year. I can’t afford things to cost more but I’d be less sad about it if they all included extra things for the increase. Like if our landlords decided that with the upped rent they’d now install a cocktail bar, a slide to the front garden or even just get rid of the mould in the living room. And maybe our kid’s nursery could, I dunno, have her for 15 mins more a day. And home insurance could add ‘in-case of Godzilla attacks’ in there. I dunno, something positive somewhere would be nice wouldn’t it? The Will Smith slapping Chris Rock at the Oscars wasn’t a good thing but also it was really great to see a headline that wasn’t ‘the world is about to die’ so that was a plus. Also it was nice as a comedian to know that even if you reach the lofty heights of hosting the Oscars, its still basically the same as doing Portsmouth Jongleurs was. Oh, do I have stories about people trying to attack me on stage. FUN. Except not.

Big thanks this week to Conal who donated to the ko-fi and to Joe & Kat who bravely joined the completely unrewarded patreon. Thanks tons to you all for that, and of course should you want to support this podcast slash pay my agent’s nursery fees while Rishi Sunak juggles bread, then you can do that by joining the patreon.com/parpolbro or doing a one-off donation at ko-fi.com/parpolbro. Either are grand and dandy.

I’m sure I’ve got loads of admin things to say but mainly I’m snot and so have no idea. So instead this week:

INTERVIEW WITH KATE INTRO

There are some things that are dangerous but have a purpose in human life so it makes them ok. Knives for example. Sure, that machette you carry around seems unnecessarily large and dangerous, but actually its real purpose is slicing big slabs of cheese for a mega sandwich. Maybe it’s not just for stab times? Sure chlorine was used as a chemical weapon but look now, it’s perfect for making your children’s eyes sting at the swimming pool. But nuclear weapons really only have one use, which is to destroy absolutely everything in a wide radius, slowly kill everything in a wider radius and disrupt global climate in a radius that’s so big it’s the whole earth and I don’t even know if that’s still a radius because I don’t do science. There’s no ‘oh but actually you can use a thermonuclear bomb to dry your hair super quickly’ side to it, because the only thing it does is destroy everything. So I will forever find it baffling that they exist at all, when I’ve been brought up on a diet of action films that feature stories where whenever a world ending threat appears, someone like the Rock, or in my youth Jean Claude Van Damme starring as himself, his twin brother and his aunt, would nearly die in order to stop the villain before disarming the device and sending it into the sun so no one would ever be at threat again. Yet in reality, what actually happened was the world saw in 1945 in Japan how horrifically awful, destructive and inhumane the use of nuclear weapons was, and several big countries said ‘ooh let’s make bigger ones’ and then seeing that other big countries made them too, then said ‘ooh we’d better make more world ending bombs as a deterrent for other countries’ world ending bombs’ and now on earth there are loads of world ending bombs when you’d only really need one to know it’s a bad idea. Maybe Jean Claude Van Damme gave up when he realised how many family members he’d have to play to stop them all. The idea that the best deterrent is just killing everyone on the planet before someone else does is a really curious notion of one upmanship. Right now, there is a nuclear threat from Russia who have a stockpile of approximately 4477 nuclear warheads, enough to kill the planet several times over then give the cockroaches that survive an entertaining Disneyland level firework show every week for years. That’s Russia, who just illegally invaded a country. But do any of the people in charge of their country’s nukes make you feel at ease? Authoritarian Minecraft character Kim Jong Un? Nationalistic Ewok Narandra Modi? Boris Johnson who’d definitely hit a red button if he saw it because he’d hoped it’d make a funny noise or bring him booze? If you stop to think about it for even a second, it’s not just about whether nuclear weapons are in the wrong hands, it’s that they probably shouldn’t be in anyone’s hands at all.

Because it seems to be a real trend at the moment to reboot things from the 80’s, the threat of nuclear war is back on the table of scary world ending crisis again and so this week I spoke to Kate Hudson, the General Secretary of CND, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. I asked her if whether the world was reaching progress on scrapping nukes until the past few weeks, if everyone’s forgotten how scary nukes are and seems to now think there can be small ones and nuclear weapons do have a secret sandwich based use to make them worthwhile. Ok not the last one, but it was a really useful chat with Kate, if still, ultimately terrifying. Here’s Kate:

INTERVIEW WITH KATE

Thanks so much to Kate for having time to chat, and to Pádraig (Pad-reg) for helping organise the chat. I hope that has quelled or more likely exacerbated your fears of melting in a nuclear apocalypse. You can find Kate on Twitter @kate4peace2021, and of course CND can be found @CNDUk on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. I’ve posted some specific links in the podcast blurb to their campaigns against Trident, the war in Ukraine as well as one to sign their letter to the Prime Minister not to increase the UK’s nuclear arsenal and of course a join up link too. And yeah I was pretty lucky that I got to go to Hiroshima in 2015 and that peace museum is such an important but unbelievably upsetting place. I feel like every world leader should be made to march round there and read every display card before they can have a job.

What else, and more importantly who else might actually reply to my emails and be willing to talk to me? I mean guests but you know, also potential friends. Sorry, no I mean just interviewees. All thoughts on what to talk to people about and which people to talk to about it are welcomed. And send them thoughts to partlypoliticalbroadcast@gmail.com.

END

And that’s all for this week’s Partly Political Broadcast podcast. You know what you done and you won’t get away with it for much longer, you’ll see. Oh sorry, wrong recording. Thanks tons for listening, and possibly consider spreading the word, donating to the ko-fi or patreon, reviewing the show or handing the money back under cover of night and no one will say a word, that’ll be that. Sorry, wrong recording again.

Gratitudes, platitudes and hairy dudes to Acast, my brother The Last Skeptik and Kat Day.

This will be back next week when Rishi Sunak shows that he’s just like everyone else by having the automatic train door open on him while he’s having a shit on a journey. But its then revealed to be a photo op involving someone else’s shit and his popularity drops again by 2%.

BYEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

This week’s show was brought to you by Covid. Again. Bleaurgh.