Further Reading

Transcript

Hello and welcome to the Partly Political Broadcast, the comedy politics podcast that I’m amazed ever gets done when I make it from home and have to fit it in between all the trips to the fridge to get some cheese. I’m Tiernan Douieb and this week as Conservative MP and man who is the exact casting call fit for a serial killer in a gritty Northern drama Lee Anderson says the main cause of food poverty is a lack of cooking skills, that’s obvious very personal to him as he’s a victim of missing several necessary ingredients, looking horribly overdone and all of his opinions are lacking in taste.

The term ‘Nanny State’ has been used in British politics a lot in the past referring to government interfering with us smoking or drinking ourselves to death, or conditions on sugar in food because actually we want our teeth to fall out and then we can save costs on dentistry and toothbrushes and anything harder to eat than soup, while having a truly British appearance that matches our government’s toothless approach to everything. But really, right now, we are living in a Nanny state. But by that, I mean one where everyone in charge of the country is so used to having paid help run around after them that they don’t think they’re responsible for anything. I’m curious as to what, in their private lives, they actually do for themselves and are happy to acknowledge as so? Is every time they’ve forgotten to feed a pet the fault of the animal for not knowing how to make its own food? Is every time they can’t find their keys, the fault of the keys themselves for not making themselves available at every second of the day? Is every poorly done arse wipe actually the responsibility of toilet roll manufacturers for not creating something that perfectly absorbs all of the remnants of their £400 breakfasts? In fact so many things now aren’t remotely their fault it is questionable what it is they do other than point out things they haven’t done. Are they that powerless to stop anything? Is being elected to be in government now some sort of political straight jacket and by putting these people in such a job are we simply handcuffing them while screaming in their face ‘hahahah watch while we think so hard that gas prices rise and you can do nothing about it’?

The Chancellor Rishi Sunak who in his previous job sat on top of a young chef’s hat and puppeteer his cooking, said that he was prevented from raising benefits in line with the cost-of-living crisis by his computer. Which operating system do you use Rishi? Windows Shyster? Apple OS exile? Is it because his computer said he had to verify his location, but he couldn’t work out if he was in the UK or America, let alone where his wife was? Imagine being the Chancellor of the Exchequer in charge of the UK’s financial policy but unable to do anything because the computer says no arseholes? Apparently, the systems can only do such a task once a year, like it’s a Conservative Father Christmas because for those not on universal credit everything goes through a 40-year-old system and I guess having a donkey deliver the one hard disc that can make the changes takes a while. What bad timing, and just as Rishi Sunak says he is ready to help on the cost-of-living crisis but isn’t actually doing anything yet because he’s probably struggling to enable macros or something. The Bank Of England are also to blame for underestimating how much inflation might rise, and the government want to make the independent body more accountable. Which probably means taking its independence away, bringing it under government control where it’ll continue to be shit but they’ll be able to blame it dodgy wi-fi or not formatting a USB stick correctly. The treasury did spend £250k on focus groups last year though, because the little paperclip must’ve popped up asking if he wants help to waste taxpayers money on vanity projects. Still at least now Rishi Sunak is certain what sort of image he needs the public to see him having, and it turns out it’s that of someone who is both a Luddite and yet who can only see everything in a strictly binary way.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson, a man composed of at least 45% soft cheese and the rest is a manifestation of a sinking feeling, is in Northern Ireland because the NI Protocol is now a political problem. Presumably it wasn’t a problem when he said it was the best deal ever and implemented it because at that point, he didn’t understand what it meant. This was the deal that at one point was oven ready but presumably not having anyone to work the oven for him meant it just sat there while the Prime Minister hoped it would cook itself. The DUP are still refusing to go to work to do the only job they have, are still getting paid for and don’t do properly, unless it’s sorted out. Though if I was on an endless furlough, I’d pretend I wasn’t happy with something that would take months to sort out too. They see the protocol as detaching Northern Ireland from the rest of the UK, but their party is regularly detached from reality and imposes that on the country, so I think its fairsies. The EU don’t want the British government to shred the protocol not only because it’s the deal Johnson signed and lauded and it will threaten peace in Northern Ireland, but also because it’ll mean sitting in a room with him and probably now escaped specimen from the museum of pathology Jacob Rees-Mogg and couldn’t imagine anything worse. Currently the plea seems to be for the EU to be as flexible with the UK as they have been with Ukraine, though that’s like demanding you get rushed to A&E as quickly as the victim of a terrorist attack because you’d just told all your friends you’re going to do the coolest party trick ever and ended up shooting yourself in the foot. Are Sweden and Finland not worried that they’ve signed a mutual security pact with the UK last week? There’s every chance that were they to come under attack Boris Johnson would claim protecting them wasn’t in the deal and threaten to cancel it as we need our military to deal with a number of self-inflicted issues like flooding or lack of medical staff so don’t have time to help others. Meanwhile any refugees hoping to come over will find themselves re-routed to Rwanda as Johnson insists they’re doing everything they can but how were they to know they’d actually have to read the pact at any point?

As we teeter on the brink of a trade war with the European Union, once again the government have chosen Foreign Secretary Liz Truss, a broken ATM of a person, to head up the frontline with her threats to trigger article 16 probably only because she thinks she can get a photo shoot out of signing it, or setting fire to it or whatever she’ll get to do though she’s unsure as she’s never looked into what it is before. All of the 27 EU member states have avoided a recession so by putting sanctions on the UK, it’ll be nice for them to get such a close-up view of what could have been as we here become somewhere tourists can visit to see what happens to people living only on radioactive vegetables from Fukushima.

At least those vegetables might cook themselves which would please Lee Anderson, the MP for Ashfield whose political record includes being investigated for anti-Semitism and saying poor people should be put on forced labour camps, which when said together really paints his profile as the kind you’d only see after someone had been involved in a school shooting. Last week he insisted that food banks aren’t really needed in the UK, it’s down to generation after generation who cannot cook properly. It’s very weird how all those generations just lost that ability from 2010 onwards isn’t it? According to Anderson you can make a meal that costs just 30p but he’s not taking into consideration the energy costs, the time needed, the ability to bulk buy or the fact that most people can’t survive entirely on a diet of out of date Ginsters pasties like he clearly does. Anderson said he’d proved it can be done though by having a day where he and some chefs made 180 meals for £50 which is about 30p each, and that does show that indeed it can be done and it’s a shocker as to why more people using food banks don’t have an entire team of staff, an industrial scale kitchen and a professional help or they could do it too, and frankly it’s just lazy of them not to bother. Anderson had invited MPs to visit a food bank in his constituency where those getting food parcels now have to register for a budgeting and cooking course, presumably so once they’ve done them, they’ll have better skills than a Prime Minister who doesn’t know when something is oven ready or not, or MPs like Anderson who claimed over £222,000 on expenses last year. Home office minister Rachel Macclean, who’s default smile is one that looks like she’s about to try and eat you, suggested people could survive the cost of living crisis by just taking on more hours at work or getting a better job. Yes, it is that easy and if you’re already so lazy that you work all the hours of a day but don’t earn enough money, then why not stop whinging and learn to freeze time so you can fit more hours in and work till you die? Oh, and in-between working all the hours, don’t forget to do that cookery course. Food banks are a complicated issue said Rishi Sunak last week, probably because for him he understands both of those words but not together and he’s turned the screen brightness right down by accident and can’t see anything he googles. Taxpayers subsidised £17m of food in the House of Commons over the last three years and I think maybe MPs just don’t know how to cook properly and we’d save a lot of money if they were forced to go on a course before using the restaurants and bars.

No one would be home to cook things anyway if it was up to the Prime Minister who is once again calling for a return to offices as he says when he worked from home he was constantly distracted by making coffee and eating cheese. It does explain a lot that he struggles to work from home, while his home is literally the place he also works. Though we must also remember that Johnson insisted that many of the lockdown parties at No.10 were actually him working, which makes you wonder if he can only work at home when parties are going on around him. Maybe the further 50 fines for illegal parties given to staff at No.10 last week by the Met, were for Boris Johnson’s emotional support parties? Perhaps rather than live in No.10, Johnson could be relocated to a children’s soft play, endlessly surrounded by noisy parties and he’d get tons done. Actually, no sorry, there’d be kids there, so he’d just keep denying he knew any of them and go AWOL. Brexit Opportunities Minister Jacob Rees-Mogg, yes that prick again, still insists Partygate is non-story in which the public is losing all interest, which we know isn’t true as that’d mean he’d spoken to a member of the public and he avoids doing that at all costs. Mogg says the issue is with fixed penalty notices as there should be a trial to prove you’re guilty of criminal conduct. Brilliant. Let’s get the Prime Minister on trial then, thanks Reesy. I’m sure he’d love to prove how he gets distracted by cheese at a social event too meaning it’s definitely work.

Home Secretary Priti Patel, the only person rejected from Hydra for breaching their ethical and moral standards, has admitted it will take longer than planned to send refugees to Rwanda because of meddling from liberal lawyers. Yes, damn them for meddling with the law like their job entails. The best way to stop that happening though would of course be not to have policies that are unlawful, though you know maybe the computer won’t let them do that. It is tricky isn’t it? Fixed penalty notices don’t give someone a trial so aren’t fair, but also by actually following the law and checking policy adheres to it, lawyers are being troublesome. What to do? I can’t believe Priti Patel is really anti-traffickers when if she’s really not that bothered about the legality of what she’s doing she’d just pay a load to take people away for her? Its these teetering between the two that’s really pathetic. Come on Priti, either back down and follow sovereign British law or go full slave trader I say. The latter would obviously be horrific but at least we could look forward to pushing a statue of her into the sea at some point. During the Queen’s Speech Commons debate Patel detailed plans for a spy bill to stop covert spies in the UK, you know, as opposed to those overt spies who can’t stop letting everyone know what they’re up to. It makes me wonder if when she said she went to the Bond premiere for work, that is was for research and Patel now genuinely thinks all international spies introduced themselves with surname first name surname and if they don’t they’re wrong uns. The Home Secretary also described plans to overhaul human rights law on account of her thinking a large number of people aren’t and so don’t deserve it. In her speech she accused Labour of defending foreign murderers and paedophiles coming to the UK, which no doubt she’s against as with the Royal family and former Tory MP for Wakefield we’re already full thank you.

The Queen’s Speech, well, wasn’t. Lizzie decided that shit wasn’t worth her reading and so was too ill to do it and they didn’t even try to get her to do it via zoom on one of those screens on wheels, where the first bit would be on mute and someone called mr fuckboy would hack into it in the first 2 mins and do all the swears. She is doing a number of duties on zoom and the press keep saying she’s becoming the first ever zoom monarch, but I didn’t think she wore trousers much beforehand. I was hoping that as the Queen couldn’t do the speech at the opening of parliament, they’d get someone who has done the Channel 4 alternative Queen’s Speech at Christmas, but instead harrowed cauliflower Prince Charles had to cover for his mum and tell us all how tough times are now that we’ll all have to pay more to heat his homes. Maj’s crown had to come in a car all by itself and sit on a stool next to Charles on his golden throne, in an image that really said we’re all in this together. It is so bizarre that in this country we can watch a hat get put in a limo and then placed on its own special cushion and be ok with that, and at the same time I’d prefer it if all the royals were replaced by hats and then calling it the crown estate would be a bit funny and not just depressing. To be fair to Charles, he read it out with all the enthusiasm of a small 73 year old boy who’s been told he has to by his mum. 38 bills were announced including plans to make all schools have to be academies as its not fair to current academies that they’re made to look shit by council run ones. There was also the modern slavery bill which will supposedly tackle slavery supply chains, almost certainly by Priti Patel legalising them and running them herself. What there wasn’t was any plans to fix the cost of living crisis, and Levelling Up Secretary and when you chew your food and put it on your tongue and make someone look at it but for a face Michael Gove was asked if there would be an emergency budget for such things, he just did a terrible Harry Enfield impression, then a bad American accent and the word ‘cocaine’ trended across social media. But it is hard to tell if it was drug addled or not as he’s always that unfunny, arrogant and weird. Then again maybe his advice is simply if you’re full of class A’s you probably won’t want to eat as much, thus saving plenty for your heating.

But if he was, it could be his emotional support cocaine needs as without them he’s unable to work. And anyway, what is he meant to say when it’s not the government’s fault that so many people are falling into poverty is it? It’s the computer or the bank of England or the war in Ukraine or liberal lawyers or the EU or people working from home or the last Labour government or children or bees or the works of Michelangelo or the long lasting effects from the Opium War of 1839-1842 or that tree over there or the concept of time or Michael Barrymore or the sunshine or the moonlight or the good times. And if you don’t understand that then frankly you deserve to be poor and should just learn how to cook while working in all of the jobs all at once and stop whinging about how the government should do better. Because as we all know, they can’t actually do anything at all. Well until that one day a year the computer works anyway.

In other news, Wakefield’s Constituency Labour Party walked out of the final selection meeting for the choice of candidate for the upcoming byelection, accusing Labour HQ of a stitch up because all the local candidates had been stripped out. Still what good what it do Labour to have a candidate that actually knows the area when they’re never going to visit anyway and will base their entire campaign on not being a paedophile like the former Tory one, but in a way that feels like they’re protesting too much and no one will trust them. The date for the by-election hasn’t yet been set so while Labour are expected to win, there’s still adequate time for them to ruin it by not really trying. Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and her family had a face-to-face meeting with Boris Johnson for the first time since she was imprisoned in Iran and she told him she’d been living in the shadows of his wrong comments for four years, when he wrongly claimed she was a journalist. Apparently, he looked shocked but didn’t apologise. That’s probably because it took him a few seconds after hearing ‘your mistake has had a lasting impact’ to realise she wasn’t talking about something one of his kids had done.

A statue of former Prime Minister and first human to live without any functioning heart Margaret Thatcher was egged within hours of it being erected in Grantham, which is a shock as everyone assumed it would be done much quicker than that. Honestly though, with people being unable to afford food right now, it is abhorrent that even in bronze she continues to take away people’s dairy goods. And lastly, the UK came second in the Eurovision song contest on Saturday thanks to singer Sam Ryder who looked like a cross between Nickelback and a student’s rug, who sang a song about being an astronaut which was obviously popular across Europe as a parody comedy song on account of how he’ll never achieve that dream after we left the European Space Agency. Ukraine won, but to really support the country the UK should have stepped up and offered to host next year’s contest, if only so we could watch most of the acts get stopped by border control and most of the competition have to happen in a shit filled lorry park near Dover.

ADMIN

Yooooo ParPolBrods. How goes things? Just a short episode this week because I have things to do, ok? By that I mean I’m working from home and keep being distracted by cheese. Its funny isn’t it that I think when Boris Johnson said that, it was the first time I’ve ever related to anything he’s ever done. I am always distracted by cheese, even when there is no cheese around. I’m aware that the working from home argument is almost certainly spurred on by many of the Conservatives pals owning big office blocks that they’re gonna lose rent on, but also I have a feeling it’s because none of them do any work from home at all and it’s a major projection. Like everything is. One day there’ll be a psychologist who’ll term a special type of narcissistic qualities as simply Conservatism and it’ll open a whole new field of study based entirely on people who think that because they can’t cook no one else can. Then again, I do the same. I can’t backflip so I assume most people can’t backflip either but that makes more sense as they can’t. Or maybe they can and I’m being a snob? If they can’t, why aren’t they doing it all the time? I would backflip everywhere. To the shops, taking my daughter to nursery, like everywhere all the time. Which makes me assume people can’t or can but realise that maybe it’s best not to do it while holding hands with a 4 year old and trying to cross a large road.

So yes, mini one this week as I’ve failed to get a guest – look I’ve got stuff on alright? And by that yes, I still mean eating cheese. So just a very quick thanks to James and Scott for donations to the show this week and if you want to do that, which you do right? I mean you know one way out of this cost-of-living crisis is to give me all your money? No don’t google that, I swear its true. Proper economics and stuff. Ahem. Definitely. Er…yeah so you can do that by doing a one-off donation at ko-fi.com/parpolbro or better still giving me a monthly donation of even £1 a month to patreon.com/parpolbro which would be super nice of you.

Only other thing to mention is that the kids politics show I do with Tatton at Simple Politics is at the Lighthouse in Poole on May 31^st. There are two shows, at 2pm and 7pm and its suitable for all ages from 7+ if you fancy that. It’s called ‘How Does This Politics Thing Work Then?’ and tickets are at lighthousepoole.co.uk or in the link I popped in the podcast blurb.

Hopefully normal sized episode next week though I may have messed up guests again so er…we’ll see, but till then, a very quick this:

QUEEN’S SPEECH

Last week at the opening of parliament a hat sat on a mat on a table which ruined the rhyme, next to a gangly house elf in fancy dress and the latter read out a speech the Queen was meant to, but she skived off because even she didn’t want to have to pretend to think any of it was any good. This Queen’s Speech, like all before, set out what the British government are pretending they’ll do over the next parliamentary term but almost certainly won’t achieve, will have to u-turn on or with some of them will push through with so little scrutiny that they’ll then blame someone else for it going wrong in a few years’ time. So what are these 38 bills? Well, I’m glad you asked, sort of, as here is a very quick run through of all of them and what they’ll supposedly do.

1. Levelling Up and Regeneration Bill – Yeah levelling up, you know what that means don’t you? Everyone does, its obvious. It means things will, er, level up, you know, by er levelling up. This bill will do all the vague things like drive local growth, empower local leaders to regenerate their areas so the government don’t have to do it, and give residents more involvement in local development so nothing will actually get built because oh dear noise and my perfect view of the traffic on the dual carriageway. Michael Gove has already said this bill will be harder to do now cos of costs so expect it to be reduced to the occasional extra postbox here and there and constituencies with Tory MPs will get a Shetland pony visiting the town square every third month.
2. Schools Bill – The schools bill will reform education and offer targeted support to children and families most in need across England. Except what it seems it’ll actually do is force all schools to covert so they’re run by an academy trust meaning local government has no responsibility over them, and they control their own curriculums, term dates, safeguarding policies and school hours. Ofsted reports show council run schools do better than academies so I suppose this government bill will make every school equally as rubbish. Oh I see ‘targeted’ as in shooting them down to ruin their life chances.
3. Transport Bill – there will be a new public body called Great British Railways which will supposedly provide clear lines of accountability and more reliable services. Yes it does sound like renationalisation doesn’t it? Except GBR will oversee which operators to give contracts too, so actually it’ll just mean all the contracts will go to whichever of Grant Shapps’s school friends had a model railway set.
4. Energy Security Bill – This will extend the currently unsuitable energy price cap beyond 2023 rather than you know, and focus on cheaper, cleaner and more secure energy even though nothing the government have done so far show any evidence of that and Johnson went over to Saudi Arabia to do smooching, while there’s talk about more fracking so I think this more the security of all the shitty energy we have right now.
5. Draft Digital Markets, Competition and Consumer Bill – This is new legislation to strengthen consumer rights after leaving the EU got rid of some of them. The government reckons consumers are burderned by £1.8 billion of unwanted subscriptions, and I want to know which of you grassed on this show? The legislation will also tackle fake reviews, so again I’m sure it’s great but there goes my lovely 5 stars from Definitely Karl Marx.
6. UK Infrastructure Bank Bill – This one is vague but is part of the government’s bigger strategy to deliver net zero by 2050, aka when this government won’t be in power so won’t have to answer why it hasn’t happened. I mean, they wouldn’t anyway. And they might still be in power. Oh god.
7. Non-Domestic Rating Bill – This one will create a fairer more accurate business rates system for those that survived the lack of support during the pandemic.
8. Media Bill – This is the one that will privatise Channel 4 for no reason other than Nadine Dorries doesn’t understand how she can be watching people watching TV and is worried that might mean someone is watching her watching TV and it scares her.
9. Product Security and Telecommunications Infrastructure Bill – This will aim to get 4G coverage over 95% of the UK by 2025, meaning everyone everywhere can download the news about whatever awful shit the government has done now even quicker.
10. Electronic Trade Documents Bill – this will give electronic trade documents the same legal status that paper documents have, which is a great idea. You’ll note its just trade because if they did it for immigration or proof of ID documents then the Home Office wouldn’t be able to lose them as easily.
11. Draft Audit Reform Bill – This will make a new statutory regulator called the Audit, Reporting and Governance Authority. What will it be in charge of? Er, audits, reports and governance I guess. I don’t know everything ok?
12. Brexit Freedoms Bill – This is the one that any laws retained from our EU days could be amended, replaced or repealed with legislation that better suits the UK and by that they mean changed so it’s the opposite and will do nothing for you, or exactly the same but has British in it so they can pretend they thought of it.
13. Financial Services and Markets Bill – Kinda like the one above, this is for financial regulation that is designed for the UK, so it’ll allow for city boys to crash the economy again and Rishi Sunak’s family to own everything.
14. Data Reform Bill – An overhaul of the UK’s data rights and law framework which could be good and needed or just mean they’ll own everytime you do mean tweets about them then have you deported.
15. Trade (Australia and New Zealand) Bill – This one will boost trade with Australia and New Zealand which I’m sure will help that net zero aim previously mentioned. Still though with the cost of living crisis meaning so few people will be able to afford holidays, I suppose it’s nice all our food will be managing to travel.
16. Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Bill – No this isn’t regulation just for the Prime Minister. This is to develop precision bred plants and animals which I think means like pigs that can shoot a target from a distance and therefore become war pigs. Maybe.
17. Higher Education Bill – More school reforming but for older kids and a loan that’s the equivalent to a student one but you can use it for anything so even if you don’t go to uni you can feel the pressure of constant crushing debt while unable to find a job. Equality.
18. Social Housing Regulation Bill – This will enshrine housing tenants rights and the ability of renters to hold their landlords to account over housing issues which I’m sure will have some small print saying landlords can get around it by evicting you and getting in someone else for a 150% rent increase while the walls are still falling in and rats provide a constant soundtrack.
19. Renters Reform Bill – oh wait, this one will abolish no fault evictions and allow tenants to challenge unfair rent increases so maybe it’ll be great. Though I bet the cost of challenging it will be some estate agent charging you £20 for every page of paper you have to fill in, in a 500 page document. Yes, I am a pessimist. What of it?
20. Harbours (Seafarer’s Remuneration) Bill – After the whole P&O shizz, this will stop ferries from docking at UK ports if they don’t pay their workers properly, and now I want there to be a TV show about a group of people trapped on a ferry for eternity and their escape.
21. Social Security (Special Rules For End Of Life) Bill – This one will change the definition of terminal illness to being 12 months or less rather than the current 6 months, so towards the end of your life people will get access to key benefits and have more time to plan what your last words will be. Though I’m already aiming for mine to be ‘whatever happens, remember the secret treasure is hidden in…’ then die.
22. Public Order Bill – This one will stop protestors using guerrilla tactics. No I don’t mean eating bananas, I just mean by criminalising gluing themselves to things or blocking roads. So, protestors will have to think of new ways to make Priti Patel lose her shit. What if they glue themselves to the police arresting them too? Then no one can go anywhere.
23. National Security Bill – This is the one stopping international espionage unless they donate enough to the Conservative Party then it’s fine.
24. Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Bill – This one will strengthen anti-laundering efforts and other criminal activity in the UK and no doubt help collate data so that they can all send that money as donations into the Conservative Party instead.
25. Modern Slavery Bill – This is the one that tackles that vague term of modern slavery that most of the current immigration policies aid. Really if this bill was any use it’d just cancel out most of what Priti Patel does but it probably won’t do that.
26. Draft Protect Duty Bill – This is a draft bill, which means its full of air. No jokes, it’s open to consultation. Whether or not the government will listen to any advice I’ve no idea. This will give security requirements to venues at risk of terror attacks, but I mean they already take the bottle caps off you so what else could be done?
27. Draft Mental Health Act Reform Bill – Another draft one, to modernise the mental health act so the definition of mental health disorder isn’t just the handful of conditions it currently applies to meaning even more people will spend months waiting for an NHS appointment.
28. Bill of Rights – This is the one that will replace the Human Rights Act and you’ll note it doesn’t have human in it anymore. Apparently it will end abuses of the human rights framework, by which I think Priti Patel means allow her to send even more people to Rwanda
29. Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Bill – This one is already causing, er, troubles. I really wanted a better word there. This bill would give immunity to veterans from prosecutions over deaths during the troubles. Basically, if British soldiers killed people willy-nilly they’ll get away with it rather than face the justice the victims, families have been seeking for so long. It was going to be blanket amnesty but now the government have gone back on this and said it’ll be a case by case basis which is better. But still you know, not great for anyone who’s the family of a victim to know that the person responsible may get away with scott free.
30. Identity and Language (NI) Bill – This ones for the Northern Ireland executive if it ever gets up and running again and will implement bits like granting official status to both Irish language and Ulster Scots, and repeal a ban from 1737, which is when many of the DUP were born, to use Irish language in courts.
31. Conversion Therapy Bill – Another controversial one because this sets out to ban conversion therapy but not for trans people or anyone over 18. The statement said it will set out to ban abhorrent practices which do not work and cause extensive harm, but if you’re trans or 19 and over then enjoy your extensive harm and abhorrent practices. See, don’t say this government don’t give anything to the youth eh?
32. Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions Bill – This will stop the rise of discrimination and by discrimination they mean BDS protests which have been used in the past to protest things like, you know apartheid, and are currently used to protest against the Isreali government’s occupation of Palestine and horrific shooting of journalists. But obvs much better to protest that sort of stuff while eating all their snacks and boosting their economy right? Maybe we could do some sort of reverse policy where we eat so many of the offending nation’s goods they run out and then have a food crisis? Bit mean but just a thought.

Then these guys are continuing bills:

33. High Speed Rail (Crewe-Manchester) Bill – for the next bit of HS2. No not the bit that was cancelled, the other bit from Crewe to Manchester so people can be unable to afford tickets on even faster journeys.
34. Procurement Bill – This will make public sector procurement easier which I’d love to say I understand but I don’t but I think it’s good but it might not be. You’re welcome. You don’t get this sort of expertise on other politics podcasts do you? Exactly.
35. Online Safety Bill – This one was meant to go through earlier this year and is all about making social media platforms safer but at the same time has no clause about banning Nadine Dorries from them.
36. Draft Victims Bill – this will strengthen and simplify the rights and support for victims of crime, but I suppose it will depend on who did the crime and if they were in the cabinet at the time.
37. Animal Welfare (Kept Animals) Bill – This one will recognise the capacity of animals to feel pain and suffering, particularly spineless creatures so lucky day for Matt Hancock
38. Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill – This one will punish universities if they don’t protect free speech, which currently they all do and there’s only one case where they didn’t but then they did. So looking forward to days and days of debate on this so that universities can keep doing what they’re already doing for the sake of a culture war.

So that’s all 38 bills and a mini explanation for all but one of them. No I won’t google what public procurement is. Ok I will. Ok I still don’t understand it. You look it up, I did the other 37 what more do you want? Anyway, do you have a favourite? I’m going for the one that will breed war pigs, but only because I find the idea of David Cameron waving one of them off to the front line very funny. Which will pass? Well probably all of them unless the government ever lose their majority, but how many will actually happen is a whole different kettle of fish. Which won’t be allowed under the animal welfare bill and rightly so. Actually, that probably cancels out the war pigs too doesn’t it? See? Everyone this government manage to fuck it up.

END

And that’s all for this week’s Partly Political Broadcast podcast because as they say, all good things must come to an end, which is why this show will be back next week. If you find yourself thinking ‘this show really deserves to be listened to by 99.9% of the world’s population’ then why not be the change, and once you’ve stopped pushing a bee into a 2p coin which isn’t very nice, why not recommend this show to someone who might like it? You could also join the patreon at patreon.com/parpolbro or buy me a coffee at ko-fi.com/parpolbro and even maybe give it a shiny 5 star review at Apple Podcasts or similar fruit and audio based sites.

Graciousness and stuff to Acast, my bro the Last Skeptik and Kat Day.

This will be back next week when Rishi Sunak’s computer crashes and the economy collapses while he waits on hold on the phone for three days till he gets through and is told to turn it off then on again.

BYEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

This week’s show was sponsored by Lee Anderson’s How To Cook On A Budget. Hundreds of recipes that if you’re struggling you can cook for just 30p, use of a Michelin starred restaurant’s kitchen, the finest Le Creuset collection and Gordon Ramsey as a personal chef. If you’re struggling with the cost of living, Lee Anderson’s How To Cook On A Budget shows you that if you’re just willing to fly around the world you can pick many of the exotic ingredients for free. How To Cook On A Budget, with forward by Michael Gove explaining how if you do several lines first you’ll have a smaller appetite anyway.

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