Further Reading

Linear liner notes 

Is there anyone in the cabinet that isn’t a bully? Has Rishi Sunak hired them as protection or did he have to take them on or they’d flush his head down the loo? Budgets to fill an imaginary black hole, a new deal with France that already hasn’t worked for four years and a chat with Dr Vinicius De Carvalho (@rennavmc) at the King’s Brazil Institute (@kingsbrazil) about the recent Brazilian elections where they finally got rid of Bolsonaro.

Key links and sources of info from Dr Vinicius De Carvalho’s interview:

• Dr Vinicius De Carvalho on Twitter – https://twitter.com/rennavmc 
• King’s Brazil Institute – https://twitter.com/kingsbrazil 
• King’s Brazil Institute webpage – https://www.kcl.ac.uk/kbi 
• The King’s Observatory of Democracy in Latin America (KODLA) on Twitter – https://twitter.com/kodla_  
• KODLA events  – https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/org/48997537573 
• Dr Andreza De Souza Santos at the University of Oxford – https://www.anthro.ox.ac.uk/people/dr-andreza-de-souza-santos 
• Canning House on Twitter – https://twitter.com/Canning_House 

All the usual ParPolBro stuff:

• Get 15% off at British Boxers with the code in the episode – https://british-boxers.com 
• Review the podcast here – https://lovethepodcast.com/parpolbro 
• Twitter – twitter.com/ParPolBro and twitter.com/TiernanDouieb   
• Facebook – www.facebook.com/groups/ParPolBro  
• Website – www.tiernandouieb.co.uk/podcast 
• Donate to the Patreon – www.patreon.com/parpolbro 
• Buy me a coffee – ko-fi.com/parpolbro 
• The Last Skeptik – www.thelastskeptik.com 
• Kat on Twitter – https://twitter.com/chronicleflask 
• Buy Kat a coffee (go on, spread the love) – https://ko-fi.com/katday 

Transcript

Ep292

Hello and welcome to the Partly Political Broadcast, the comedy politics podcast that delivers the show that markets expect. No sorry, I mean Mark expects. That’s our one listener. Hello Mark. I’m Tiernan Douieb and this week as Prime Minister and millionaire shortarse frownie Rishi Sunak warns that we’ll suffer if we don’t all pay more tax, I mean, is that right? His wife didn’t pay any for ages and seems to be having a great time.

There is a real run of comeback gigs happening right now. Bands like Pulp and Blur are announcing huge shows for next Summer, where they’ll no doubt play all their greatest hits of the 90s while their fans, myself included, spend money they don’t have on extortionate tickets in the hope of recapturing that time when we actually enjoyed things, then jump around for 30 seconds, realise everything hurts and understand maybe it’s not quite the same as it was. And wouldn’t it be better if this gig was seated? In politics, the returns of well-known names are far less exciting but probably more costly whether that’s in financially or mentally exhaustive. One of these names is cold stare of a man who consumes only bath salts George Osborne, one of the engineers of austerity, if you can call it engineering when all you’ve done is stop things from working. Sometimes he’s called in the press the architect of austerity, failing to understand that architects make designs for construction not destruction. If someone had trusted Osborne to design their home, its likely they’d arrive to the site to discover merely a smouldering heap of rubble that still somehow managed to avoid having any mobility access points. After helping run down the country to its bare bones in his time as Chancellor, Osborne’s now been called back in to if there’s any marrow to extract from the inside of them or perhaps if the joints can be used for some expensive furniture or cheese tools for the very rich. Current Chancellor and who gave MDMA to that spaghetti Jeremy Hunt sought his old colleagues advise when putting together the Autumn fiscal plan, full size budget, red lunchbox of doom, bunch of cuts horror show, or whatever you’d like to call it. What useful guidance could the man who looks like he’s been bathing in cocaine give to the man who resembles someone who is constantly struggling with depth perception? Is he likely to help balance the economy when he’s personally seemed as balanced as Patrick Bateman since he upgraded from folding towels to start in politics? Maybe his advice to Hunt will just be ‘it doesn’t matter if everyone hates you and you get booed at the Paralympics, once you leave people will realise you have created job growth after all, even if it’s just the 12 you’ll get for yourself. Then years later some other shit Chancellor will pay you to tell him exactly the same thing while figuring out how to convince people that doing the same thing that helped get us into this terrible financial situation will definitely, definitely work this time around. I mean it is substantially Osborne’s mess, so I suppose getting him in to advise how to clean it up makes some sense, if it wasn’t that experience shows it’s the rest of us that have to do it for even less pay than before. The reality is it’s like asking an arsonist for tips on the best way to convince people what these burned ashes really need for regrowth is a flamethrower over them followed by flipping the bird at its remains as you do lines off the back of the business card with more titles on it than a Pirates of the Caribbean sequel and even less wanted.

The budget, which may or may not have happened by the time you hear this, will deliver the financials the markets expect. So says the Prime Minister and thank god someone’s finally thinking of the markets. It did worry me that here we are, complaining about how you have to take out a loan to buy some butter, but all the while no one seemed to be putting the preferences of the very rich men in suits who change country’s futures based on how emotional they’re feeling that day. Our public finances are going to be on a sustainable trajectory apparently, which is because we are all going to have to pay a bit more tax. No one minds that right? Taxes fund our public services that we need and by us all paying more we are getting the benefits of all those services being cut and run into the ground…hang on. What kind of deal is this? I’ve seen better offers from scam texts telling me I’ve got an HMRC refund if I only click this link to a website based in China. Look hey, HMRC have branches everywhere and at least if this goes wrong, I’ll only lose my money and not all the NHS’s as well. There will be spending cuts of £35bn and plans to raise £20bn in tax, which will apparently fill the treasury black hole that much like a real black hole you can only see if you use a bunch of very specific methods that unlike a real black hole aren’t actually the best ones scientists would use. This treasury space phenomenon can only be seen and indeed understood if you stare at public finances through special corrective lenses that remove all inequalities. It is a shame that we’ll have to spend so much to deal with something that isn’t there and won’t help us at all when really Rishi Sunak could’ve not written off £33bn of covid related losses, or the £37bn for track and trace which failed or even things like the royal yacht that has now been cancelled only after £2.5m was spent on it. I can’t help but feel that this is the way to fix the economy in the same way a child would insist the best way to help them go to bed is if they neck that candy floss and watch TV until 10pm. The Royal College of Nursing whose members will be going on strike for the first time in history have been told by the Health Secretary and no I can’t actually remember who it is…hang on…Steve Barclay? No its gone again, Stu Parkley? No, sorry everyone. Its someone, there definitely is one, because they told nurses that the 17% pay rise, they’ve asked for would cause inflation and help no one, you know, not even the nurses that would be able to use it to eat and survive. But how would they enjoy that food knowing that their money that they’d be putting back into the economy won’t actually help remove the imaginary black hole whereas the NHS being reduced to nothing but 3-day wait to enter a tent where you can have a plaster and a glass of water will benefit us all. I must admit it is tricky when you don’t understand economics like me and people like Sunak who get it so much he keeps losing money, and Jeremy Hunt who understands it so much he forgot all the luxury flats he bought on the south coast, they do understand it. And I’m sure that like the Chancellor says, they will do what they can to make this recession as short and as shallow as possible, which is funny as that’s also how I’d describe the Prime Minister.

What will also help our finances is the £63m we are giving to France to help tackle the dangerous border crossings taken by asylum seekers. You know the ones that are dangerous because we refused to put a processing centre at Calais or have any sort of safe routes to the UK and then when people get here they’re put into unsafe housing for years and Conservative MPs stand outside where they’re staying encouraging people to firebomb them? Those ones. Money would be better spent paying France to be our sponsor and everytime we think about spending vast amounts of money making everything worse for both asylum seekers and immigration numbers, we could call them and they’d say ‘no, be strong. Spend that money on actually making the application scheme easier or keep it to use then you won’t need to degrade yourself selling weapons to the regimes they’re fleeing from. You can do this.’ Except they’d say that in French. So, we wouldn’t make any attempt to understand, just point and shout loudly in English and it’d all be pointless. This money will go to more border patrols, more drones and even more night vision goggles so the British government won’t miss scowling at people in desperate circumstances even when it gets dark. How is the Home Secretary and star of the Land Before Time Suella Braverman meant to know exactly where to dive into the channel and pull dinghies underwater with her bare hands when she patrols the beaches at night, sniffing the air for signs of invaders? The UK has already given France £175m since 2018 to deter border crossings but as its clearly our system that’s broken not theirs, why wouldn’t they take our cash for doing very little and occasionally go ‘oh yes we are working hard, here have some goggles.’ 75% of people that apply for asylum in the UK are accepted and even more go through after appeals, so all this plan really is, is putting cash into a shredder during a recession, while popping spike strips on the road out of spite to make sure the last leg of the marathon to survival is even harder. This new deal with France might not even be legal, something that Suella Braverman should know as she once saw an old episode of Perry Mason on the TV once, as its currently just an 843 vaguely worded document and most of those are the Home Secretary typing ‘bring me that girl and that dog, I don’t care what you do with the rest of them. Fly, fly!’ Surrounded by droppings of mouth froth. What exactly are we paying them for then? Oh wait, its so we can go ‘well that’s France’s fault’ when absolutely nothing changes isn’t it? Rishi Sunak said he was confident the crossings could be brought down, but there was no one thing they could do to fix the situation. No that’s right. There are several things and you’re not doing any of them which makes you even more useless. If only it was markets coming across on boats in the hope for a better life, then I bet the government would be clambering over each other to haul them in, but unfortunately, it’s just human beings and all those bastards do is cause inflation by wanting to stay alive. What Braverman doesn’t realise as it’s hard to see clearly through those night vision goggles, a safe route to the UK for asylum seekers would automatically reduce inflation and there’d be no need for quite so many dinghies. So there.

Maybe it’s not comebacks as such but second chances. This government are all about that aren’t they? Whether it’s for Suella Braverman, the deal with France, austerity, George Osborne, not refugees or indeed Eugene Tooms looks ill Gavin Williamson. Well more of a second, second chance for him which is what anyone deserves after only purposefully leaking highly confidential details of a meeting and being the worst Education Secretary in history. Its only right that Rishi Sunak in his government of integrity would let Williamson have some vague role that then he’d have to leave again due to accusations of bullying. Not just a few accusations either, but absolutely loads as it seems Williamson had spent most of his time in parliament just walking the halls making threats which explains why he didn’t do any of the job he was meant to and likely told people he’d see them by the gates after school if they dared grass him up. One senior civil servant reported that Williamson told them to ‘slit your throat’ and another to ‘jump out of the window’ which is horrendous as everyone knows the government only use that language on people in poverty and refugees. Williamson seemingly resigned of his own accord, though we can all hope that actually he was bullied out of office, saying that he wants to comply with the complaints process and clear his name. Which I guess he’ll do by threatening anyone who says anything mean about him and really lose his shit with whoever wrote that he’s a big bully on the Commons toilet cubicle doors. Maybe now future government’s will think twice about hiring Williamson for anything ever again, though it’s more likely he’ll get a second, second, second chance and have at least 15 more cabinet roles of increasing duty until someone stands up to him, pulls his pants down in the canteen in front of everyone and he has to leave to start again in another area. But then rumours have since appeared about Justice Secretary, Deputy Prime Minister and man who clearly tumble dries his skin on too high a setting Dominic Raab. Turns out he’s a big old bully too, which makes you wonder if Sunak is either the nerdy maths kid that buys off the big kids to protect him, or more likely a twerp who got harassed into hiring them all or they’d flush his head down the toilet again. When he was made Justice Secretary again, apparently MoJ staff were given an out so they wouldn’t have to work under Raab’s wraaaath, three a’s. Stories came out about him throwing the tomatoes from a Pret salad across the table at them, which isn’t how you encourage staff to ketchup with what you’re saying. Sunak says he doesn’t recognise the claims against Raab, which might be like when a witness has been intimidated so picks the wrong person out a line-up on purpose. Will Raab, like Williamson, have to step down or will he just throw salad everywhere insisting he’s turned over a new leaf? Is Sunak’s cabinet just all full of bullies and what happens when they start to bully each other? Will they all have to ignore each other, or worse, join together to bully the country? Oh wait no, that’s already been happening for years now.

The opposition are showing the government though just how to tackle bullying, and that’s by following their tradition for everything and doing nothing about it. Shadow Health Secretary and if you asked an AI to merge the top of a pencil and a toby jug Wes Streeting was heard in the commons referring to ex-party leader and could play most of the characters in a live action Winnie the Pooh film Jeremy Corbyn as ‘senile’. Not a great term for someone to say whose also in charge of policies for those who suffer from dementia, and other memory affecting conditions but maybe this is Labour’s health policy? They’ll scrap funding to the NHS because instead Wes Streeting to go out and shout derogatory conditions at people and then they won’t have to see a doctor for a diagnosis. Corbyn was addressing Rishi Sunak bringing him up for the millionth time at PMQs, which the party have decided to deal with by making big announcements that he’ll never stand for them again. It’s amazing watching someone as unskilled in communication as Rishi Sunak play the opposition like Derren Brown moulding clay. The Prime Minister keeps bringing up a leader they’ve not had for 3 years, and who’s had the whip removed and rather than realise they’d being played Labour divert all attention to the fact they’re still more bothered by Corbyn than Tory policies. Some have suggested that leader and what is Wes Streeting had livor mortis Keir Starmer should step in and remove Jeremy Corbyn from the Labour party altogether as he still retains membership. But of course that would be a leader interfering with disciplinary procedures and a breach of the EHRC code, which would then mean he’d need the whip removed from himself, Rishi Sunak would keep bringing Starmer up to whoever the next leader was and the cycle would continue. Bullying, name calling and making decisions entirely because of peer pressure, I’m starting to wonder if they need to replace the speaker with a strict teacher and have all the MPs parents come in for a meeting.

The other comeback that hasn’t gone as well as planned is that of former Health Secretary and what if a minion fucked one of HR Giger’s aliens Matt Hancock, who made his debut on ITV’s I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here last week where he told the gaggle of people given the title of celebrity because there’s little other way to describe such a lack of personality, that all he was looking for was forgiveness for breaching the covid rules that he made. But he didn’t at all mention letting all those elderly people in care homes die so I guess he’s cool about that bit. Hancock has had to endure various grim trials such as eating a camel’s penis, but probably didn’t find it all that difficult after the years he spent regurgitating bullshit and licking boots. Quite some effort was spent getting the other contestants meals even though he could never be arsed voting so school children had any, and I suppose the other celebs should be pleased there’s no footballer on this year’s show or Hancock would just berate them for trying to do anything to help. Then on the weekend Matt Hancock had to be rushed off to the show’s medic because he was bitten by a poisonous scorpion who had obviously tried to do more for the British public than anyone else and should be knighted. I was hoping Hancock would be released early in order for the hospital to free up beds and he’d be sent back to the camp ill, but I suppose I should at least be pleased he’s not been given the appropriate protective gear to survive out there and hopefully it’ll happen again soon. In an ideal world, not only would Matt Hancock be eating camel’s dick and being bitten by scorpions but it wouldn’t be televised, as he clearly gets kicks out of that, and he’d just have to endure it in some sort of underground cell as a punishment. This is yet another shitty, shitty man that doesn’t deserve any sort of a comeback, unless that’s just part of yet another challenge where he has to deal with a sexually frustrated and very angry gorilla.

In other news, former Chancellor and glasses on a snooker ball Kwasi Kwarteng blamed former Prime Minister and small dog on a playground roundabout Liz Truss for, well everything, complaining that he’d told her she was going too fast. Which based on rumours about those two, is imagery none of us needed. Inflatable clown bop bag and Conservative MP Mark Francois was condemned for using an outdated racist slur in the Commons, which is just so stupid of him as if he’d used a more modern one they’d have let him off as it might’ve appealed to young conservative voters. And a list of voter ID that will be needed for the next elections has been revealed, largely discriminating against younger voters. If you don’t have any identification but you are keen to have your influence British politics then may I suggest becoming a Tory party donor as they don’t do any checks on those at all.

And lastly, in the US mid-term elections, the Republicans failed to achieve the red wave they said they’d have, unless of course they meant some sort of wave goodbye. The Democrats took control of the Senate, and while the votes for the House are still coming in, it’s looking a lot closer than was predicted by pollsters. The main upset, apart from that of all the crying red hat Maga bros, was that many Republican candidates that backed former President and overgrown teratoma Donald Trump lost their race, proving that perhaps now we should be referring to his type of politics as unpopulism. This is the third election where Trump has cost the Republicans seats and but there’s still a chance he’ll try to run for President again and I say let him, as we all need a good laugh. Many Republican voters didn’t vote as they’d been told by Trump and his gang that voting was rigged, meaning that maybe some of their bullshit lying was beneficial to the country after all. Young voters voted overwhelmingly for Democrats, and cancelled out the votes of the over 65s, with the overturning of Roe Vs Wade being a big factor. Hahah take that anti-abortion activists. Must be gutting for you that when kids are born they grow up and vote against you.

ADMIN

What what! How goes it ParPolBrods? A bitty old week of news isn’t it and no doubt one that from Thursday when the Autumn budget financial statement fiscal doo dah is announced it’ll all be up in the air again. Hence why this week’s got an interview that will hopefully outlast that. Maybe. My agent, sorry daughter, learned all about rememberance day at school last week and has spent every day since saying ‘we have to remember them as they all fought in a battle but then died’, which isn’t really a helpful interpretation for those who either truly think of those who lost their lives in war or those who glorify bloodshed as either way it just sounds like ‘they tried but weren’t very good.’ I have tried to explain a more nuanced version to her but to no avail. This is the kid who recently when told a squash flavour was ‘summer fruits’ very genuinely replied ‘and some are not?’

Not much else going on to update really apart from me being nominated for an award that gets announced this week which is the first time that’s ever happened and is very exciting. I’m up for an Industry Excellence Award at the brilliant Manchester Animation Festival for the Hey Duggee script I wrote and I’m on a list with two other excellent nominees so I’m very excited to be there. I really wanted to go along as the whole festival sounds brilliant and do check it out at manchesteranimationfestival.co.uk but well, depressingly I just can’t afford to fork out for travel and accommodation at the moment. And that same day I’ll be teaching kids in Essex how to do stand-up so will have to try my best not to drift off mid-lesson and start saying ‘I shouldn’t be here. I’m meant to be at an awards ceremony you know…’ Twitter has somehow survived the week despite moon face mars base Elon Musk running it in a way that makes me not sure he could run a bath. I will keep plugging guest’s twitter accounts on here for a while longer but you know, we’ll see what happens. Then I mean if it goes under, what will we do? I find it so useful to follow all the politics chat for this here show and indeed find guests, so I guess I’ll have to, gasp, actually do research. Hmm. Not sure about that. I mean what if we have to actually go outside and talk to people instead? Awful. Really awful.

Cheers muchly for returning to this sound happening and big thanks to Sam and James who donated to the ko-fi this week, and if you’d like to buy me a coffee at the rate I set on there years ago. I’m guessing coffees are now about 12 times as much, then please do at ko-fi.com/parpolbro, or even better support me monthly at patreon.com/parpolbro. But I am aware that everything is stupidly expensive and about to get even more so. Genuinely wondering if for Christmas I’ll just have to buy people a selection of groceries as they’ll all cost more than most gifts anyway. Our weekly shop is now so much I’m worried that I’ll have to start being like a ticket tout where I head outside and sell it all off again for a raised profit. Obviously if you can’t donate, which I mean, I couldn’t right now, then please do consider giving this podcast a nice 5 star review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Audible or one of those platforms as it hasn’t had one in aaaaaages and it’d make me feel smug for a whole day or at least a bit of one. Thanks.

On this week’s show I am speaking to Dr Vinicius De Carvalho about the recent elections in Brazil and what it means for them and indeed the world. Yes that’s right, a small moment of escapism from British politics as we look at somewhere else that’s actually had an election go well. Will it be enjoyable or just make you jealous?

INTERVIEW WITH VINICIUS

Brazil is the third biggest coffee producer in the world, but a few weeks ago during their general elections it seems they must’ve kept some of that for themselves as the country woke up and kicked what if Dracula could age really badly Jair Bolsonaro out of office. Elected four years ago after a spate of corruption allegations and arrests in the Brazillian government, Bolsonaro was supposedly a radical change for the country. And he was, just you know, not for the better. Seen as a Brazillian Trump, not just because he appears to be melting and has concerning hair, but also because he was advised by fascist whale Steve Bannon and his far-right views were a tick box of all the worst opinions about everything. Homophobia, racism, anti-vaxxer, climate changer denier and also very recently became involved in a paedophile row where let’s just say he wasn’t arguing against them. He oversaw a secret budget handing out government money to lawmakers with no oversight, inequality in Brazil reached extreme levels and under his watch the deforestation of the Amazon increased dramatically. So yeah, not your ideal leader unless you’re really looking for a tour guide to dystopia. And then, in the election two weeks ago, Brazil got rid of him. Just. Bolsonaro was defeated by returning candidate Luiz Inacio or Lula Da Silva, a trade unionist, former metal worker and well, former President. This will be his third stint in the role, and it could’ve been his fourth if he hadn’t been arrested before the 2018 elections on a charge that was later nullified. The perfect sort of story for a US cable channel drama in years to come, called something like Prison to President, the Lula Story. But jokes aside, it is an even better story for Brazil. He aims to bring peace and unity to the 5^th biggest democracy in the world, and Lula being in power means a better chance of the world’s biggest rainforest surviving. You know an actual Amazon Prime. And of course that means a bigger chance that we all will to. So can Brazil be unified now they’ve shunned their populist previous leader? Or will Bolsonaro try to do a Trump and still cause division then ultimately lose all his colleagues their seats because oh damn the US mid terms were funny? And how is it with all that coffee they have time to do anything rather than be constantly near a toilet just in-case?

I thought it’d be good to talk to someone about an election that actually went well for once, so this week I spoke to Dr Vinicius De Carvalho at the King’s Brazil Institute. He is the Vice Dean in the Faculty of Social Science and Public Policy at the King’s College London, and plays an active role in Brazilian studies there too, what with well, him being Brazillian and knowing all about it. This year he created the Observatory of Democracy in Latin America with other experts on the subject and they are now carrying out a number of events and talks in real life and online too. I was very pleased Vinicius had time to chat and I asked him all about what Lula’s election means for Brazil and if he’ll be able to unite the country, and what it means for the rest of the world too. It was a fascinating and insightful chat, so hope you enjoy, here is Vinicius:

AFTER INTERVIEW

Big thanks to Vinicius for that chat, and also to Grace at the King’s Brazil Institute for putting me in touch with him. The King’s Observatory of Democracy in Latin America is launching properly later this month, and so there isn’t a direct web link yet but I’ve popped the link in the blurb to their Eventbrite page which lists upcoming events, and their Twitter, should that platform last the week, is @KODLA. Vinicius is also on Twitter @rennavmc again, you know, should Twitter still be there by the time you’ve finished listening to this. King’s Brazil Institute is kcl.ac.uk/brazil and again, if it hasn’t imploded in the next 5 mins, @KingsBrazil on Musk’s broken new toy.

I’ve actually got all of the guests lined up at the moment. More guests than you can shake a stick at, which I’ve found is not a great way to keep guests and actually should you want them to come on the show its much better to put the stick down and ask nicely. That doesn’t mean I don’t want great recs though. Go on, send over who I should do chats with and you can do that via the ParPolBro facebook, Twitter for now or partlypoliticalbroadcast@gmail.com.

END

And that’s it for another one of these here Partly Political Broadcast podcast things. Before this gets all back up in your grill again on the semaine prochain, why not recommend its existence to others who like sounds in their lugholes, donate to the ko-fi or patreon if you can afford to help support my weekly slog in making this happen and even if you can, give the show a nice 5 star review on Apple podcasts, spotify or other places podcasts lurk in the dark.

Thanks a bunch of bananas to Acast, my bro The Last Skeptik and Kat Day.

This will be back next week when Rishi Sunak admits all the cabinet take his lunch money and he’s too scared to do anything about it or they said they’ll lock him in the cupboard until he wees himself.

BYEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

This week’s show was sponsored by Blame France. Got things wrong in your home that you can’t be bothered to fix? Is that leaky roof an effort to just think about? Try Blame France, a new initiative from the British government where for £63m you can avoid doing anything about it at all. France will promise to look at pictures of roofs and maybe even fly a drone over yours before taking no other action and then when you’re asked why there’s still a bucket of rainwater in the living room you can proudly say ‘urgh bloody France.’ Blame France, for when you could fix a problem but absolutely don’t want to.

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