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Ep276

Hello and welcome to the Partly Political Broadcast, the comedy politics podcast that Prince Charles is also rumoured to have privately criticised as ‘appalling’ and actually I’d agree. I’m Tiernan Douieb and this week as Prime Minister and what if Hitler fucked a drunk yeti Boris Johnson insists deporting asylum seekers to Rwanda must go ahead as it’s the government’s job to stop people breaking the law. I thought they were already managing that by doing all the crimes themselves so there aren’t any left for anyone else?

For many weeks, nay years, sorry just translating it for horses there, I have been pondering on this podcast just what the British government’s endgame is, with the economy shrinking faster than birth rates after regurgitated pie Michael Gove has done a TV appearance, the cost of living meaning the only ones benefiting right now are the undead, sorry I mean Conservative donors and bankers, and a food, work and health crisis looming if not already here and if it isn’t its only because travel is also screwed so nothing can get anywhere. Nothing seems more British right now than leaving your baggage with another country and hoping they don’t mind. Yet, from the ashes of the smouldering bin fire that is British politics right now, something has arisen. No, not a phoenix of hope and rebirth, just lots of smoke to ensure that the fire damage travels in the wind and makes people have an awful time across the pond too because the British government are considerate like that. I would like to present my thesis that the government this whole time are simply trying to complete a bucket list of breaking laws on every possible level. Ministerial code breaking and sovereign British law not abiding, they were mere gateway acts of disobedience. Now, with the changes to the Northern Ireland Protocol and deportation of asylum seekers to Rwanda, they’ve set their sights on the big time. Yes, breaking international law, for that real global Britain recognition so everyone everywhere will know that we do have exports it’s just that its mostly misery, illegal activities and sadly people who really don’t deserve it. Still, I suppose it just shows we haven’t changed much as a country since the 1700s. If the government could just focus on nicking more stuff from abroad too, then we’re in full historic re-enactment time. My concern is, where next? Once they’ve become worldwide crims, will they look to break intergalactic law? Could we see Johnson persuading the Conservative billionaire donors to build him a rocket looking like a bus replete with unattainable promises on the side, just so he can have a mining party on the moon and breach Space Law? Perhaps negotiate the best deal ever with aliens that allows them to beam away all our farm animals in return for some space biscuits that are exactly like jaffa cakes, and then Johnson will break that agreement by saying that it wasn’t working for us and actually it’s the aliens fault that they’ve heat rayed us all into oblivion? Ooh, I’ve surprised myself there by adding a positive, hopeful ending. Who knew it was possible?

The Northern Ireland Protocol is upsetting the balance of the Good Friday agreement, said the Prime Minister only 5 years later than everyone else did. After supposedly getting Brexit done, it seems somewhere along the way after insisting they didn’t need the instructions, the government have finally realised they’ve put several pieces in the wrong way round and now the only way to fix it is take it apart and start again, not admitting that it will still look shit and the preferred choice would be to smash it with an axe and take it to the dump to be recycled into toilet paper. And that probably wouldn’t do the job it promised either. The government have published plans to scrap parts of what the Prime Minister had previously called an excellent deal with the EU, but who could’ve known that just a few years later it’d be causing political instability in Northern Ireland like everybody that read it had said? Foreign Secretary Liz Truss with her perpetual expression like she’s stepped on a rake because she likely has and then insisted on doing it again and again until the rake gave in, she said the government want to restore political stability to Northern Ireland, and nothing will do that than by pandering to the DUP who voters shunned in the last election in favour of Sinn Fein and the Alliance party who support the protocol. It’s like dealing with a customer who wants to return an item by taking it then giving them two of exactly the same item in return but the extra one is in a colour they’ve already told you makes them feel violently ill. I mean the British government have a responsibility to completely overlook the boom businesses in Northern Ireland have had by still essentially being part of the single market and really focus on how the DUP are a bunch of whinging babies who don’t seem to believe in evolution because they can’t manage to develop or adapt to anything so why should anyone else?

Currently there’s no checks on goods between Northern Ireland and the Republic, but there are between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK but the new bill would mean there’s no border in the sea or in Ireland and instead businesses can just decide which limited market to sell to, either Europe or Britain because nothing says freedom like forcing a Sophie’s Choice of trade rules. Nothing like solving an international agreement with internal policies that completely ignore the other parties involved that made it international. Liz Truss has insisted the government is acting in line with the law, but they’re not very good at acting as it’s obvious they’re breaking it. Northern Ireland Secretary and what if there was a Minecraft character that had absolutely no skills or use Brandon Lewis insisted that this bill would not break international law on account of they’ve said it wouldn’t so you know that’s probably all the guarantee you need, also would you like some snake oil because the gov.uk/snake-oil site says it’ll definitely make your hair grow back? But Sinn Fein party leader and lovechild of Gilbert Gottfried and an aubergine Mary Lou McDonald said it will be law breaking and Brandon Lewis was talking through his hat, which does at least explain why his hair is such a perfect square if it is indeed actually an adornment. The EU are now threatening legal action against the UK for tearing up the legal agreement that the UK government made, agreed to, added clauses to that would’ve breached it then backed down and took them out and agreed to it again, while winning an election on how great it was but now say it doesn’t work. Boris Johnson says now that plans to break the great deal are not a big deal which I don’t remember being one of the deal options during the initial negotiations. Still, it must be hard reading the small print when you’re so hungover from all the parties. There is of course the chance that the EU will renegotiate and be more flexible on some of the terms, in the way that I, as a parent, sometimes do just let my daughter watch TV because it’s easier than putting up with more incessant wailing.

Now that the Covid mist has lifted, or at least everyone’s just got so used to it they’ve now got Covid blindness – Which is different to actual Covid blindness – it means everyone can more clearly see how Brexit has absolutely knee capped everything. The Centre for European Reform says its largely to blame for the £31bn loss to the UK economy which shrunk yet again in April, and it can’t just be blamed on the showers. April showers I mean, not the ones in government. It contracted 0.1% in March and then 0.3% in April and I do worry that if the contractions become larger and more regular that we’re only months away from the UK giving birth to an absolute monstrosity of a shitting, crying completely dependent island. Downing Street have said it is too early to tell if Brexit is shrinking the UK economy, and I suppose the right time will be after a report, or when it’s so small that no one will be able to find it anymore and that way they can’t ask questions about it. ‘Oh it might’ve been Brexit but now a mouse has swallowed the economy we’ll just never know.’ UK growth is now worse than anywhere in the world except Russia and they illegally invaded a country, whereas we took that idea that you are your own worst enemy to heart and decided to take ourselves out. Former Brexit Secretary and experiment to see what bacteria could grow on cotton wool balls David Davis said the reason Brexit isn’t going well because we have a Remainer’s Brexit. Do we? Wouldn’t that mean we didn’t have a Brexit at all? That’s like having an Amazon approved union or a Russia approved Ukraine. I don’t think Remainers negotiated Brexit, or they’d have, well, not. I feel like David Davis is the sort of person who repeatedly blames his farts on someone who died decades ago. Oh, it wasn’t me, it was er…Jack Lemmon. Let’s be a little bit fair to David Davis even though he doesn’t know what the term means. It’s not all Brexit that’s destroying the economy, it’s also having a Chancellor like Rishi Sunak, aka someone stuck eyes to a pair of scissors, who failed to insure the UK against interest rate rises and lost the country around £11bn, or for Sunak, the equivalent of one of his kid’s weekend pocket money allowances. Pretty impressive that Brexit is a monumental fuck up for the country but Sunak alone has done a third of the damage by himself. I mean he’s obviously good with money right, as him and his wife spend a lot of time and effort gathering it for themselves. Sunak opened London Tech Week by telling delegates that the UK must embrace new technologies. Is there a robot that can do maths better than he can? If so, lets replace him with AI right now to save the country, I’m certain it’d have more emotion and probably deeper sympathy with British people too. The Prime Minister’s solution to the current economic crisis is that everyone in the country needs to deal with wage cuts or face 1970’s style stagflation, which isn’t, as I’d have hoped, where people make deer shaped balloons. So yes, you need to have less money to help the economy, the economy that really needs you to spend money for it to be saved. I’m not really sure how everyone having less cash helps the country have more, unless it’s like that rumour that if you don’t wash your hair for months it then cleans itself. The thing is, the months before getting there involve absolutely everyone avoiding you. Will the economy just generate its own cash after seeing there’s none anywhere else like a parthenogenesis of money? If so, what’s stopping it doing its own thing without needing us at all? Is Johnson’s ultimate plan to move in with the economy and the two of them do their own thing while we all starve? Still one good thing is we can all get wage cuts by just not going to work and with fuel at now nearly £2 a litre, there’s no point in travelling in when you could just refuse to go and you know, avoid the deer balloons. The National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport workers, or RMT are planning 3 days of strike action across the railway networks due to threatened wage cuts and redundancies, but the Transport Secretary Grant Shapps who looks like he’s always distracted by his own smell, suggested that agency staff can replace those on strike. Yes, nothing would make me safer than knowing I’m on a train being driven by the temp of the week who’s only experience is they had some Brio aged 4, while a student doing a part time weekend job is on signals control in-between making a tik-tok reaction to someone eating a slightly unripe plum. I suppose it’ll really help workers travel when every single line across the country has been driven off the tracks and into the platforms. Co-chairman of the Conservative Party and Minister for bootlicking Oliver Dowden tweeted that because Labour were backing the strikes they were Labour’s strikes and encouraging people to sign a petition. It is a very strange thing when those in government with an 80-seat majority want you to think somehow the opposition has more power than them. Either it proves they are unbelievably thick and have no clue how government works, or they’re so weak and pathetic that an opposition with less seats keeps crushing them. Still I hope his petition gets loads of signatures then gets hacked so everyone can have a full database of the country’s most idiots.

While fuel costs mean no cars, rail strikes mean no trains and the continuing travel fuck ups mean there’s still holiday delays, it seems the only real way you go anyway is if the Home Secretary and global wasp influencer Priti Patel has you as someone she wants to illegally send to Rwanda. Yes, breaking an agreement wasn’t enough, the Home Office would also like to go rogue against international law by conducting an inhumane deporting of asylum seekers to somewhere even less safe than our country where the government are responsible for most of the crime rate. Patel said the UN High Commissioner of Refugees had backed the flights, but the problem with that was that they actually hadn’t and had instead condemned them as failing to meet the required standards of legality and appropriateness. Though I suppose for Patel, it’s easy to see why she’d think that was approval when its ticked all her fave criteria. Shaved withered alpaca Prince Charles was rumoured to have privately said the policy was appalling, and his family protect his paedo brother so he must really have a low opinion of it. Boris Johnson’s reply to that was that most people can see that criminal gangs need to be stopped, and it’s a way to stop people breaking the law and support those doing the right thing. Really? How’s that? Is it because all the legal action against it will mean the Home Office will be far too distracted dealing with that to break the law in other ways? Depressingly the high court ruled that the flights could go ahead but the number of passengers to be deported on Tuesday night has now at least been cut down from 31 to only 8. Three passengers were children who the Home Office had deemed to be adults, possibly because they were more intelligent than anyone in the HO, and one who was a victim of torture but is being sent to Rwanda as they have, and I quote, a functioning healthcare system. Nice to know even the Home Office understand they’ve fucked the NHS to the point where you’d get seen quicker if you were unfairly deported. Aside from the fact that of course, sending people who are seeking safety to another country where they may not be safe, is absolutely inhumane, the policy also doesn’t make sense if you’re a flag waving walking sunburn who thinks its people who came on dinghies that somehow lost £11bn of tax-payers money because as we all know, being locked away in inadequate detention centres gives you direct access to the treasury. If you are one of them, you might be overjoyed to know that the agreement with Rwanda does state that for every asylum seeker we send to them, they can send a more vulnerable and in need asylum seeker to us for treatment. Meaning we’ll be shelling out an absolute ton on flights and then also putting even more pressure on the NHS too. No wonder Rwanda has a functioning healthcare system if they’re sending all their sick people to us. Still, I hope the flights still somehow get blocked and then we still have to take in the vulnerable asylum seekers from Rwanda in an act of kindness that simultaneously causes Priti Patel to spontaneously combust.

This is what happens when you have a Prime Minister who breaks the law and his party gives him a vote of confidence for doing so. It was a ‘decisive win’ said Johnson after the vote last week, sniffing suspiciously throughout. It could have been hayfever, but then that’s his fault as cocaine and alcohol can really exacerbate your rhinitis symptoms. I mean he clearly had something on his mind or up his nose as when asked about what PartyGate means now, the Prime Minister said of that time he partied while everyone died, that we have to draw a line under it and move on. Or hoover it up with your hooter I suppose. Its apparently the fault of political opponents that have created animosity about him, you know those dastardly political opponents that you get in a democratic system and if he was only part of a fascist authoritarian state then everyone would have to love him and it’d be fine. He could release a book called the Boris Johnson Lack of Thought For Anyone Except Himself and it’d be a smash hit because he’d have banned all other books. Except dropped over cherried trifle Nadine Dorries’s fiction attempts. I mean her novels, not her goes at justifying policies. It’s the BBC’s fault too for, as MP for Ashfield and what if Frankenstein built his monster just out of body parts from stupid racists Lee Anderson, who accused the state broadcast of a witch hunt against Johnson. After all the licence fee freezes and cuts the BBC don’t have the budget for a witch hunt you idiot, at best they could do a 5 min piece on the one show about someone in a village who collects Halloween mugs. MP for Gravesham Adam Holloway, who sadly appears to have had someone photoshop blur his face but in real life, frothed away on Newsnight that they had depicted Boris Johnson as Hannibal Lecter after showing a picture of him, you know, looking like he does. Which I suppose does always give off ‘I’ve just gnawed off someone’s leg vibes’ and indeed the Prime Minister’s face does always look like he’s wearing someone’s else skin over it. But that is just his face. Thing is Lecter was at least intelligent and charming and had brains even if they weren’t always his own. What none of these Johnson acolytes are explaining though is if this is all a witch hunt, why did a third of their own MPs get sucked into it until they voted against their leader? Maybe best to get rid of them too and then maybe a few more for good measure.

So now, all buoyed up by his win and vast amounts of gak probably, Boris Johnson has been unveiling all the new plans that the government has. One is to transform the NHS into a blockbuster health care system in the age of Netflix. Does he mean like Blockbuster video in the age of Netflix, as in completely redundant and something simply for nostalgia? Or does he mean a Netflix style hospital where you’ll pay a monthly fee to very rarely get anything you actually want and recommending other treatments and surgeries based on your interests? Johnson was, of course, unable to actually explain. Much like his plans to let people on benefits be able to buy houses, though as the limit of savings you can have to apply for benefits is £16k, and most mortgages now want a deposit of at least 15% that’d mean there’d have to be a lot of £106k houses built. Which there aren’t. Knowing the Conservatives it will either mean this plan doesn’t happen at all, or they’ll push through policy that reclassifies a home as anywhere you lay a hat, and force people to walk around wearing hats so they’re no longer homeless. In his speech last week about housing reform, the Prime Minister talked about Ukraine, the Jubilee, and eventually after 15 minutes something vague about how the lack of housing is the last Labour government’s fault because it seems they’ve somehow still had the stranglehold on developments despite leaving office in 2010. The Benefits to Bricks policy, he called it, which sounds a lot like he’ll be swapping necessary payments for Lego, will remove a significant barrier that currently prevents thousands of families from buying their own home. Funny though, it’s been 5 years since the Grenfell tragedy this week and one barrier that still hasn’t been removed from many buildings is flammable cladding which is stopping people from moving and buying homes. Still no one responsible for the deaths of 72 people in Grenfell Tower have been charged and Kingspan, the company whose flammable cladding was used on Grenfell have seen their trading profits double since the tragedy. But still, I’m sure all the new cheap housing for people on benefits to buy will be perfectly safe.

Housing Minister Michael Gove says he wants to end the scourge of empty ‘second homes’ so I guess he’ll be asking the Chancellor and all his colleagues to just make sure there’s at least one butler in each so they don’t count.

The other big government announcements on Johnson’s coke wave included raising the age of smoking to 21, which is great because all those companies giving teens rip off apprenticeships for no or minimum wage now won’t even have to give them adequate breaks either. The salt and sugar tax is going to be ruled out now though, so perhaps 16 year olds can stress eat about the state of the world instead? It sadly does also mean that we’re just days away from Toby Jug with hair wax Jamie Oliver gurning outside parliament while waving a dessert around and complaining that poor children shouldn’t have chocolate because if they get fat they can’t fit down chimneys anymore.

Over on opposition benches Labour leader and walking allergic reaction Keir Starmer has been giving proper opposition to the Rwanda policy not by defending the rights of asylum seekers but having a go at the government for not having a proper plan to intercept people smugglers. Er, what about actual safe routes for refugees Keir? Keir? No? It’s so great to have a real opposition now that sees the government’s hard right policies and takes them on by posing equally bad ones so we can choose which level of dehumanising bollocks we want to hear. Polls of voters in Wakefield who have a by-election next week, have shown that Labour is very likely win on account of dismay at the Prime Minister. However they also don’t like Starmer saying that he is weak and a slippery slime ball. Which isn’t fair as slime is usually sticky and not anywhere as slippery as you might think. Starmer says he’s not looking at the polls in the lead up to the by-election though, and why should he when he’s drunk a pint of Guinness that had his face on it, on the white bit obviously, for its frothy head matches his own. And he’s done all the anti-immigration chat that all them voters love. So that’s racism and beer, he should be clear right? Well luckily, he’s now also being investigated by the parliamentary standards commissioner over being late in registering earnings and gifts. I take it back, maybe he is Prime Minister material.

And lastly, in some actual good news, human pedal bin Arron Banks, the businessman who was co-founder of Leave.EU, the sort of poundshop version of the leave campaign full of people who hated immigrants except the ones they’d got donations from or married, has lost his libel case against journalist Carole Cadwalladr. He claimed she had defamed him by saying during a Ted talk that he had lied about his covert relationship with the Russian government. Is it possible to defame someone who’s infamous? The court said that Cadwalladr’s comments had caused harm to Bank’s reputation, which is amazing as he previously had that of a condemned sewer so how could they tell? But it was also decided that the journalists’s public interest defence was justified. Good, though I mean it is hilarious the idea that Banks ever thought he could win a case against someone saying he was lying about something. Still, I guess he can’t be that sad as you know, it’s a victory for free speech and he loves that shit, right?

ADMIN

Yo yo yo yo yo yo yo ParPolBrods. How goes things? I’m gonna keep this short and sweet because in but a few hours I am actually going on my financially ill advised but much needed hols for a week. You know, if the flights actually leave and all that. The travel agency that we’ve booked through are really untactfully sending emails all the time saying things like URGENT CHANGES TO YOUR TRIP and then I have a heart attack, open it and it just says ‘make sure you pack batteries in your hand luggage only’. Oh, thank fuck for that. URGENT CHANGES TO YOUR TRIP. WHAT? OH GOD! ‘Your flights are the same but it’ll be a different flight operator but its still all the same just with a different logo’. Oh dear god. It’s been a fun two weeks of that. I’ve decided that as long as we get there, I am fine with getting stranded for the way back. I’ll just give up and live somewhere else. I don’t know how I’ll do this show but you’ll have to make do with a low quality version recorded by phone where I largely say ‘I don’t give a fuck anymore, I’m on a beach’ and it’ll be all joy until climate change really kicks in and the whole podcast becomes about extreme swimming. I am aware that me saying I’m going on hols is very unfair to any of you who aren’t, which is why I’m not saying where I’m going so you can imagine it’s just to the Aldi car park or in my flat but I’ve closed all the blinds and keep shouting ‘fuck off I’m not in’ at the postman. I’m also not telling you so none of you follow me because I want a proper holiday and I especially don’t want to meet any British people while I’m there. You know, proper holiday. I’m not even taking my laptop. Unless you’re a burglar listening to this then I am definitely taking my laptop.

So sorry that there’ll be no show next week and then probably the one after will be me complaining that the holiday wasn’t long enough and I spent all of it on a grounded plane while Grant Shapps’ smug face kept popping up to say he was doing everything he can while sitting around twiddling his, I assume, weirdly floppy thumbs. This week though, let me say a big thank you to Stephen for joining the Patreon, thanks tons to you. Just in time to sponsor the show as you get a week off from it. Should I take that as a hint? If you’d like to help me make this when I’m not swanning off for the first time in 3 years, then please do chuck £1 a month at the patreon.com/parpolbro or a one off £1 at the ko-fi.com/parpolbro. Either are hugely appreciated and I promise I won’t spend them on a fridge magnet while I’m away. I say that, but I will be away with my 4 year old daughter so I fully expect to only buy absolute tat and also come back even more exhausted than I was before. If you can’t donate or, let’s face it, couldn’t think of anything worse to do with your cash, then please spend 2 mins writing this show a nice 5 star review on the podcast sites, or even just spreading the word about it but you know, give it a week.

That’s that. I am hoping and whatever atheists do instead of praying that by the time you hear this the Rwanda flight has absolutely no one on it thanks to the law, and that the UK has backed from being the sort of international criminals Interpol chase after, but you know, I may well have to swear some sort of pirate’s oath on my return.

END

And that’s it for this week’s Partly Political Broadcast and next week’s too as there won’t be one then as I AM AWAY FROM MY DESK I WILL NOT REPLY TO YOUR EMAIL UNTIL MY RETURN IF ITS AN EMERGENCY DIAL 999 AS THAT IS WHAT THEY ARE THERE FOR, IF ITS TO DO WITH THE STATE OF THE WORLD THEN PLEASE DESPAIR ACCORDINGLY. Sorry, my out of office reply is already on. I should really wait to go to start that. If you like this show then well done you, and maybe wait a week or so then recommend it to people. Why not donate to the Ko-Fi or Patreon, or even give it a dandy review at Apple Podcasts or similar pod housing places.

Efcharisto to Acast, my brother The Last Skeptik and Kat Day.

This will be back in two weeks when Boris Johnson announces they are looking to tear up all of the Brexit agreement as it turns out someone really awful did it and when they find out who they’ll be in trouble as it really isn’t working.

BYEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

This week’s show was sponsored by NHS Netflix. We see you’ve had a biopsy. Why not try a cerebral aneurism repair? Or watching a reality show about real estate in America which does the same as having a lobotomy? NHS Netflix, only 10.99 a month. See Who’s Next. No sorry, I’m asking you to check as on this privitised service we don’t have any receptionists. Just you just call this name out in the waiting room? Thanks.

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