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Go to Spain but oh no don’t! Go out and eat fast food to save the economy, but oh no don’t do that, why would you do what we said? Quick lose weight or the NHS will fall over. Its another week of contradictions and assurances that things aren’t there because no one’s checked. Somehow we’ve had a whole year of Boris Johnson and he’s managed to exceed all expectations by being even more shit than we could have expected. This week’s show is on the Spain quarantine, the Russia Report, the Boris Diet and a lovely chat with author Nick Pettigrew (@Nick_Pettigrew) about his new book ‘Anti-Social’ about his 15 years as an ASB officer.

Key links and sources of info from Nick’s interview:

• • Nick Pettigrew on Twitter – https://twitter.com/Nick_Pettigrew
• • Anti-Social: The secret diary of an anti-social behaviour officer, by Nick Pettigrew – https://www.waterstones.com/book/anti-social/nick-pettigrew/9781529124774
• • P. G. Wodehouse Wikipedia page – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P._G._Wodehouse
• • Nesrine Malik on Twitter – https://twitter.com/NesrineMalik
• • Linda Tirado on Twitter – https://twitter.com/KillerMartinis

All the usual ParPolBro stuff:

• • 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
• • Review the show on iTunes – itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/partly-political-broadcast/id1075342863?mt=2 
• • Review the show on Stitcher – www.stitcher.com/podcast/partly-political-broadcast
• • 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

Hello and welcome to the Partly Political Broadcast, the comedy politics podcast that definitely hasn’t ever had any bad reviews and I would know as I’ve never ever bothered to check. I’m Tiernan Douieb and as Prime Minister and misused tepee of a man Boris Johnson announces his new plan to tackle obesity, I’m not sure it will work when it seems to be just to make sure nothing he says has any gravitas whatsoever.

If you’re on a plane from Spain, you’ll spend two weeks self-detained. All travellers returning from any part of Spain must spend 14 days self-isolating to stop a potential spread of infection, something that based on everyone I know that’s been to Magaluf, seems like it should’ve been brought in years ago. Espana has had a spike in coronavirus which of course, means that for safety, we can’t have people coming back to the UK potentially having an infection that we’ll never bother testing them for. It is very welcomed of them to take to such quick action, but it’s just unexpected. Was Foreign Secretary and massive blister Dominic Raab visited by three ghosts of science on Friday night? The government expected usual precautionary COVID procedure would be to say this would only be introduced on people returning from holidays in 2022 while just insisting anyone of Spanish origin currently in the UK will have to pay an extra £100 to use the NHS. Raab said the government cannot apologise, which I think he meant in terms of their decision on Spain but it could also have been a deep subconscious scream breaking free to acknowledge the cabinet’s collective psychological imposition. Raab said he understood that it would disrupt holidaymakers, but that they couldn’t risk a second lockdown, even though you’d have thought they’d lap up any chance to blame further economic issues on Europe. Of course, no provisions have been put in place for those that will have to quarantine, but the instructions are that they will be fined if they go to work or school, even though the latter closed for the summer holiday so technically any kids attending will be unlikely to infect others. The decision was so quick infact and with so little thought to supporting or warning people about it that many passengers only found out after landing back at a British airport, which is not the sort of baggage you want to collect. Even Transport Minister and what if Robert Webb had witnessed horrific war crimes Grant Shapps and his family had travelled to Spain on Saturday morning and so now they have to self-isolate on their return. While it’s absolutely on brand for Shapps to be the sort of transport minister who’s can’t follow an obvious train of events to see where it might end up, I hope that actually he knew all along. Because this way he’s got at least a month off from having to find yet another shit excuse for something the government have done, though chances are high we’ll see him on BBC Breakfast looking sad by a swimming pool trying to insist that some likely new policy to cut the free school meals after a week is fine because kids don’t need much food as they’re only small.

I mean take the Russia Report, finally released last week only 9 months too late proving when it comes to delivering the results of important inquiries, there’s absolutely no Russian. Ahem. What did the long-awaited report find? Well that there was no Russian interference in the election that anyone knows of because well, the government didn’t make any effort to check for any. You know, a bit like how coronavirus cases are definitely down because no one is really getting tested for it, and in the same way it’s not breaking and entering if you leave the door wide open and don’t check to see who walked in, took all your stuff and shat on the floor. In their write up, the Intelligence and Security Committee said that Russians with very close links to the results of a misshapen grapes jelly mould and Russia President Vladmir Putin are now well integrated into British society with financial links to political parties and what they called reputation laundering. This is of course so called because it’s when someone who’s totally dirty, uses a clever cycle of spin to seem like a do-gooder. The report states that Russian interference is the ‘new normal’ which must be why Boris Johnson keeps insisting everyone get used to it. Calls were made for the PM to have an inquiry into the Brexit referendum and potential interference, but this was rejected as, as Grant Shapps, transport secretary only because he’s the one they always wheel out for this shit, said there was no evidence of interference. YES BECAUSE NO ONE HAS LOOKED FOR ANY. I do wonder if the government’s system of telling the time is simply to look at a bit of paper that has the time written on it, and if questioned about what they do when it’s not that specific time, they’ll say obviously they don’t look at the paper. Shapps said that everyone knows that bots exist online, and British people are too smart to fall for social media, so more fool idiot PM’s special advisor and 3D realisation of a decrepit stick man Dominic Cummings who paid for more than a billion Facebook ads during the referendum campaign. What a stupid, because that totally won’t have worked will it? We’re all way too smart to fall for that…ooh Wish are selling a blindfold for cats, amazing! Again, I’m really not sure we can trust the barometer for intelligence of a transport secretary who’s just travelled to Spain. On the same day as the Russia Report was released the government tried to skew the news with an announcement that there would be a pay-rise for 900,000 public sector workers, so the one bonus of more Russian meddling is that if enough of them happen, frontline workers might eventually get enough pay rises to balance out ten years of austerity.

Boris Johnson has now been Prime Minister for over a year, even if he only actually turned up to work for about half of that. Funny to think that last July we were all certain he’d be massively shit for Britain, but had no idea, that 65,000 unnecessary deaths and a horrific recession later, that fair play, he’d exceed expectation and really overachieve. What’s your favourite moment of his leadership so far? Was it when he boasted about shaking everyone’s hands and then caught coronavirus? Was it when he hid in a fridge or was replaced with a block of ice for a TV debate and his dad turned up instead? Maybe it was lying about having a Brexit deal ready, or not being able to make a cup of tea, or not wanting to give children meals until a footballer campaigned about it? Or maybe it was when he unlawfully prorogued parliament and lied to the Queen, or possibly when he pocketed a journalist’s phone? It’s so hard when there’s been so, so much and in fact the PM himself took to social media to fire off as many of his government’s achievements as possible in under 2 minutes. His list included things such as building 40 hospitals which they haven’t done and won’t be doing, and getting Brexit done which they haven’t really, they’ve just sort of left it to expire. But this is what’s expected from someone who’s probably never lasted 2 minutes in his life without finishing early and lying for the remainder. More fool him anyway as the British people are too smart to fall for social media. In an interview with the BBC about his year of PMness, Johnson said that in terms of the coronavirus, they could have done things differently which is the sort of answer a football manager gives when their team loses, not someone who’s let a lot of people die because you kept scoring own goals. The PM said that they didn’t understand the virus for the first few weeks or month, and that there are lessons to be learned but judging by how little he listened to the science or the info he was given since January, it’s unlikely he’ll learn from any of them or even bother to attend class in the first place.

Now, in his second year, Johnson is pushing a campaign to tackle obesity, where the main drive appears to be to ban to deals on unhealthy food, just a week after the Chancellor and compare the market mascot Rishi Sunak announced that everyone would get money off going to fast food restaurants in August. Is it a mixed message or does the Chancellor know that most of the establishments taking up the deal have low hygiene ratings so the chances of losing weight through food poisoning are high? Aside from telling people not to do the things they were telling them to do last week, the Boris Diet seems largely about making sure unhealthy food costs more while not reducing the costs of healthy food, or buying back school playing fields, or maybe voting to make sure parliament gets scrutiny of trade deals meaning the health service would be spared being sold to US businesses. But nope, they can’t do any of that so instead you just won’t see any adverts on TV for fast food before 9pm, assuming people still watch TV and are most likely to be influenced by seeing a MaccyD’s advert during Homes Under The Hammer, calories will be written on alcoholic drinks as though you’ll be able to read them once you’ve had several anyway and GPs will be able to tell people to use apps, because I’m sure exercising your thumbs playing on your phone will burn a ton of cals. Health Secretary and man who definitely carries around his school swimming certificates just in-case Matt Hancock went exercising with The Sun, something that will take ages as that paper is full of demons. Pictures of him doing press-ups were very useful though in that his leering five head looking at the camera should scare children into running for miles. Hancock said that it would save the NHS a lot of money if every who’s overweight lost five pounds, so the good news is that the recession is going to cost each British family around £9000 so the health service should be fine. Earlier in the week Hancock was asked why he’d said that lockdown happened days earlier than it was, and he replied that the idea of lockdown as a date is wrong, as what matters epidemiogically is the behaviour of people and you saw everyone going about their business less and less. Yes, you see, lockdown wasn’t a thing that the government had to announce, but it was a vibe, a culture, an atmosphere, a state of mind. Maybe the real lockdown was in our hearts all along as we were told to stay at home for weeks and maybe it was all the friends we didn’t meet along the way.

The PM visited Scotland to try and show the merits of the union, forgetting that its main merits are how Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are the flotation aids that stop England from sinking under its own exceptionalism. Johnson said that the response to the coronavirus pandemic shows the might of the UK, which is rich considering how low the death and infection rates for Scotland and Wales were compared to England, thanks to the devolved governments being able to ignore anything that the PM did. First Minister and throwback to the era when politicians could talk properly even if they’re shit Nicola Sturgeon said that Johnson’s visit highlighted the argument for Scottish independence, probably not least because then they could’ve closed the border and not let him in. Recent opinion polls have shown rising support for Scottish independence and who can blame them when they’re now the Canada to our America, living above a veritable plague zone. I’m honestly amazed that the SNP’s economy recovery plan isn’t to hire everyone who was made unemployed to start building a wall under Gretna Green.

Why wouldn’t Scotland want to embrace Johnson’s leadership when he’s just asked the army to prepare for a four way disaster of coronavirus resurgence, the flu, flooding and Brexit disruption, in the way that in a zombie film the governor or mayor would not want to stop the spreading of the infected, just make sure there were enough weapons that none of them got near him. The UK has abandoned hopes of a US trade deal by the end of the year, probably because it will take quite a while to gift wrap the NHS, and it still looks like any deal with the EU is some way off. Still I suppose one classic way to tackle obesity is to make sure there’s not enough food or medicine for everyone. Who knows? Its very likely that actually the government will announce that obesity in the UK has been completely wiped out on account of them not checking anyone’s weight for a year, while in reality everyone is quarantined for going on the holidays they were encouraged too, putting on weight while scrolling through social media adverts by Russian bots that they are too clever to get fooled by. Then again, maybe we’ll all be fine, or at least, no one will check if we aren’t and that’s all that matters.

In other news, Home Secretary and woman made entirely of the sound when you accidentally scrape your car Priti Patel has promised a review of the hostile environment policy, promising a more compassionate and people first approach to immigration, which I assume means those are the two things she’ll deport to somewhere else. A possible plan to save social care involves the over-40s paying more tax in what some might call the ‘isn’t that national insurance though’ policy. Conservative MP for Delyn and Toe Rob Roberts is facing allegations of inappropriate behaviour after he asked a 21 year old intern to fool around with him, but the party haven’t removed the whip from him, possibly because ‘fooling around’ in 2020 could well be interpreted to mean writing government policy.

The Labour party took decisive action in the wake of the Russia Report to show that the only people interfering with their election chances are themselves. The party agreed to pay a large sum in damages to former employees, for comments made against them about their appearance on an episode of BBC’s Panorma last year about anti-Semitism in the party.

Party leader and personification of a reunion tour no one asked for Keir Starmer has always said he’d draw a line under all anti-Semitism in the party, so the pay-out is part of that and expected. Former leader and psyllium husk Jeremy Corbyn said that the party’s legal advice said it had a strong defence against doing so, and that Starmer’s decision was political not legal, and now Corbyn may face legal action against him and there are concerns that there are more cases against the party that could cause them a cash crisis. What better way for Labour to definitely stand-up for the rights of those in poverty than if the party are too? One of those who got a pay-out was former head of compliance and champion of having a beard that looks like its holding his hair on, Sam Matthews, and there are several accounts that during his time in the he party ignored cases of anti-Semitism before then saying the party had a problem with it on TV. It is a shame he’s no longer in Labour as with skills like that he’d be perfectly able to advise what the Conservatives might do and blame someone else for next.

There will be new penalties for MPs who’ve been found to break the official code of conduct which may involve being banned from foreign trips or taking anger management classes, though unfortunately there is nothing about them being stopped from becoming Home or Education Secretary. Labour MP and soap star that’s been invited to do a challenge for charity that she’s not going to manage Rosie Duffield wants to tighten restrictions on the sale of laughter gas, because its use has become more prevalent during the pandemic. Yeah, I mean because it’s becoming increasingly hard to find things to laugh about otherwise.

And lastly the Welsh Lib Dems will get a say on whether their next leader is stock photo of someone who puts things in the wrong bins Ed Davey or star of Bob’s Burgers Layla Moran, because lets face it, if they don’t get everyone involved, then Ed and Layla would just vote for themselves and it’d be a tie. No one wants that as you know what the Lib Dems are like with coalitions.

ADMIN

Yo yo yo yo yo yo yo parpolbrods. How are you on this fine…oh no wait let me just look out of the window…oh. Oh well. I hope you’re good. I am recording this mere hours after an accidental sneeze while trimming my beard meant that I also had to cut my hair. Yes, it’s very much one of those days. I have largely been avoiding social media for several days meaning I sort of missed Wiley saying lots of terrible racist things and then people like Zac Goldsmith, who ran a very racist mayoral campaign saying Wiley was the worst racist, and Priti Patel accusing Twitter of not removing hateful content, misunderstanding that that’s why she’s still on there and then everyone had some sort of racist off, which doesn’t really help anyone. I was musing over the stories about the Pentagon maybe making some of its UFO findings public and imagining how great it’d be if there were aliens as then we might unite as a planet to be racist to them instead. Anyway, I was too busy doing childcare to notice much and instead I’ve been watching as my daughter saw there was a fly in our flat and insisted that every time it flew off, it was playing hide and seek with her. So, she’d count to ten then try to find it. I’m starting to wonder if she really needs more contact with other kids but at the same time, I’ve realised not putting the bins out is cheaper than paying for nursery, so you know. I also had a lovely chat last night with a designer called Rebecca Carr, and our chat was recorded and will be online soonish. Rebecca is working with other artists in York on ways to do all the things the government have no intention of doing, such as actually sustainable affordable homes, sharing initiatives and self-sustaining communities and all that sort of utopian goodness. One of the many things they’re working on is called OpHouse and you can find it at ophouse.co.uk, where they are enlisting and enabling people who want to build and design their own small, eco-friendly home as part of a community and oh my, it just looks lovely. My fear is that I know I’d mess up the design and build this lovely looking place, move in then realise it has no toilet or I have to sleep in a cupboard. But it’s nice to know there are people being positive about how to survive the next few years, slash decades and check out Rebecca’s page at kaizenartsagency.org for more info on all she’s doing, including The Circus, and if you live in or near York, do sign up and help out.

This is the last one of these podcasts now for at least a month I think. I mean look, we all know I may have to do a small update at some point, but I’m going to try and do some other writing, look for some actual work, possibly even sleep if that’s ever an option and generally work out how to survive in a post-live comedy world. I mean, there are some gigs happening so you might see me shouting in someone’s garden over August but I probably won’t be being paid and I may not even have been invited and someone may have called the police. So, I hope you enjoy this one before the break and thank you for listening to it. Big tas also to Helen, Ruby, Claire, C who all donated to the ko-fi and to Somebody who donated a, well, substantial amount to the ko-fi and honestly I can’t tell you how appreciated that is right now. I mean it would have been appreciated at any time, but previously I’d have said it was appreciated then I might have bought a lot of crisps and coffee with it, but now it’s appreciated in a way that it means I can use to pay bills and maybe one pack of crisps. So thank you so, so much. Thank you also to Ros for joining the Patreon too and of course if you fancy helping me out you can do that at ko-fi.com/parpolbro or patreon.com/parpolbro too and as a reward for your kindness I’ll give you an insubstantial thanks on a podcast sometime in September. I know right, what an incentive. You can of course also give the show a review on any of them podcast apps, and I mean, you’ll have like four weeks to think of what to write so why not give it a go, or even just make sure all your pals and fams are subscribed and ready for when this returns in September and I find a way to make jokes about absolutely everything still being terrible.

That is for this week’s admin bit. Pretty much nothing to tell you about as nothing is happening. Oh wait, my brother aka The Last Skeptik who’s music I steal for this show, has another single out as part of a new EP that he’s releasing soon. The EP is called Nice While It Lasted, and the new single is called Smoking Area. Go listen to them on loop till your ears bleed. Ta. Or if you don’t like his music, put your music player on mute, then listen to it on loop and he’ll still get hits and won’t care what you think. Probably. I haven’t asked him, but it’s what I do with this podcast so I’m sure he feels the same.

Right, that is actually it. But before I check out for the summer or whatever it is you call this grey rainy bit that’s just a bit lighter than the other grey rainy bit, on this week’s show, I am talking to Nick Pettigrew about his new book on his time as an anti-social behaviour officer and in-between that, a quick look at the Russia Report and how its what’s not in it that’s important. That’s the sort of line I’d like to do if I hosted a proper investigative podcast. That right there, in an American accent with a plinky, plonky soundtrack and weird unnecessary questions all the time. ‘how it’s not what’s in it that’s important. Or is it? I’m Tiernan Douieb but am I really or is that what really matters?’ etc etc This show really is only half the podcast it should be isn’t it?

INTERVIEW WITH NICK

You might know anti-social behaviour as just what you’re subjected to every time you go online, but back in the late nineties and early noughties, it was a big old politics term. Then Prime Minister and always troubled jackal Tony Blair did a big speech about how he’d be tough on crime and tough on the causes of crime. Though if he’d tackled the causes first, then he wouldn’t have to worry so much about the crime bit as it wouldn’t have happened, idiot. So then came the Crime and Disorder act and anti-social behaviour orders, or ASBOs to be used against people who’d been shown to have conducted actions that cause harm or a lack of consideration against others but despite that description, for some reason it didn’t include needlessly bombing people in Iraq. Basically it’s the sort of vague stuff where you know someone’s being a dick but it’s not going to make a decent True Crime podcast, unless audiences have a real keen interest on just who wrote that Dave Can Fuck Off on the bus stop, and which Dave do they mean and why? I Susan Earwig will take you on this journey of twists, turns, a permanent marker and a friendship ruined by not sharing crisps in ‘Woodbrook Hill Stop D’ coming soon. Sorry. Back on track, ASBO’s then became Criminal Behaviour Orders under the Conservatives in 2014, whereby lots of people were charged for doing things Michael Gove gets up to on a typical weekend. The people who dealt with these issues? Anti-social behaviour officers. A tough and often thankless job, dealing with the bits other emergency services can’t and government services have neglected in ways that were far more anti-social and shouldn’t have happened if anyone had really actually wanted to be tough on the causes of crime.

This week I spoke to Nick Pettigrew, who is, as of last week, a published author, with his book Anti-Social, a darkly funny, moving, diary about his 15 years as an ASB officer. The book is an often stark and very honest account of social inequality, courtroom processes and myriad of issues that he had to deal with on a daily basis, while tackling his own mental health issues doing such a stressful job. It has had a bevy of lovely reviews too. I really enjoyed the book and it was great to speak to Nick all about just what an anti-social behaviour officer does, why he wanted to write about his experiences and the changes he saw in the areas of society he worked with over the 15 years he did it. Hope you enjoy, here is Nick:

INTERVIEW WITH NICK PART 1:

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

MIDDLE BIT –

Just before we all go on our staycations or stay on our gocations or whatever it is that means we’ll be staring aimlessly out of the window saying loudly ‘well it’s another fucking day’, you’re probably aware that the Russia Report came out last week. Yes it sounds like a sequel to the French Connection and often the very notion of Russians getting up to secret mischief feels like we’ve been sicked back to the 80s, which we haven’t because otherwise, well, and I’m just going to vomit in my mouth as I say this, we’d have a competent Prime Minister. Bleaurgh. Sorry. I didn’t say she wasn’t an evil Prime Minister, but Thatcher could at least construct a sentence without sounding like a dog putting its head out of the window of a speeding car. That’s where we are now people. That’s where we are. Fucked. So so fucked. So this week, why would enjoy your life when instead, you could find out more about just what the Russia Report said, and I thought I’d help you ruin some moments of your post Spain quarantine by trying my best to break it down like a tired intestine with a particularly indigestible dinner.

Soooooooo…The long-awaited report into Russian interference in the UK was released last week by the Intelligence and Security Committee and I’m not saying the Russians are the bestest at spy stuff, but the report said the government hadn’t even bothered to investigate any potential disruption. Why would you if it’s going to be too tricky to find? You may as well sit on your bum and pretend not to see that man dressed in camo gear pressed up against the wall, it’ll just make your life more difficult. The key findings or not findings of the report were that chums of Putin are very well integrated into British society through financial ties to parties, peers, charities, academia and the legal profession amongst others. This has been known for a while, and earlier this year it was reported that the biggest female political donor in UK history is Lubov Chernukhin, a Moscow connected financier who has given more than £1.6m to the Conservative Party. In the worst ways too, I mean, she paid £35,000 to sit next to Education Secretary and face like an open drawer Gavin Williamson at a fundraiser. Why? Why would anyone willingly want to do that? I’d pay more to not sit next to him. How badly did she need sleep? In 2014, she paid £160,000 to play tennis with then London Mayor Boris Johnson. Again why? Of all the people you’d want to play tennis against, you choose a man who always goes over the line and can’t control his balls? Chernukhin is one of many examples, and the Conservatives are one of a number of beneficiaries, among PR firms, academia and cultural institutions, something the report says is a reputation laundering process, which is where someone appears to do good publicly in order to offset a negative image. Which I mean, that’s the only reason I do anything nice. If none of you were watching I’d totally go outside know and shout Victorian slurs at old ladies. Oi! Hornswoggler! Gibface! Jollocks! There’s been £20bn of money via Russian oligarchs and financiers that has come into the UK, mostly London and then been donated around the shop just sadly not to me. The reputation laundering is all part of a larger thing with hacking, assassinations on UK soil, remember Litvinenko whose poisoning put a lot of people off sushi for all of 5 mins, or that time Salisbury got actually interesting? And of course, there are campaigns of disinformation during elections and referendums. Why would any Russians need to do that in the UK when our politicians are fully capable of disinformation all by themselves? Good question and a big part of the report was about how actually, the UK government had not seen or sought evidence of successful interference in UK democratic processes or any activity that has had a material impact on the election. Yep, they didn’t even bother.

I mean, that’s not a good look either way is it? Either they didn’t investigate it because the government knew it would bring up a whole ton of bad times news all about them and that could derail all their plans to derail things which may actually then as a result re-rail things until Grant Shapps took a look at them and they went wrong again. Or, they just were clueless and didn’t actually do half the security measures they just should, especially as a government who’ve promised to protect British sovereignty and all those other headline filling empty shit words. It is genuinely hard to know which it is. I mean, it’s highly likely from a Prime Minister who shook hands till he caught COVID like the world’s worst BANZAI challenge, that he’s cocked this up, that his predecessor before him who had all the social skills of a hurricane destroyed shed also couldn’t see anything past deporting British citizens and her own red lines, and her predecessor before her left his own daughter in a pub and fucked a pig. Probably. Definitely. So yes, it’s possible, but while the possibility that this is all intentional sounds like a proper tin foil hat wearer annual tinfest convention, pop a few of these together. This report was submitted in full on October 17^th last year, to Boris Johnson, who then said that blocking the publication of the report before an election was standard procedure and it could take six weeks. Then chair of the ISC and roadrunner’s sad uncle Dominic Grieve said actually this wasn’t normal procedure at all, it was totally invented, and the report could’ve been released within an hour of submitting it. Johnson then held back the report through the election that the report could’ve helped ensure there was no interference during, and then said it had to wait till a new ISC committee was formed after the election. This committee took ages to sort out and the government tried to parachute in Jonah of the Commons Chris Grayling to be chair, which didn’t work, and then took the whip off Julian Lewis for getting the job instead. Then when they found it was going to be released, Dominic Raab was all over the news, with his head looking like it was about to pop, screaming that actually Russia leaked government US trade documents and gave them to Labour, which actually Labour got from Reddit as they’d been there for months. I’m just saying, if they really didn’t care about this report, you think they’d have made less of an effort to stop people seeing it. It’s very much like insisting you didn’t want to go to the party anyway, as the host finds you trying to climb into their upstairs window disguised as one of the guests. Then you have, and look, I try to write new descriptions of this man but some time ago I called him a human pedal bin and I’ll never best that, Arron Banks threatening to sue the ISC if they released it, which makes him look as guilty as sin embossed with diamonds from a mine that may or may not have been used as a cover for Russian money laundering. Dominic Cummings spent 3 years in Russia from 1994 to 1997 and while its possible he was just researching exactly how best to be a Rasputin tribute act, he also had close ties with a Russian diplomat who in later years established Conservative Friends of Russia and had close links to Vote Leave before being expelled from the UK. And then there’s current housing secretary and human palmera Robert Jenricks, who has lots of close connections to very Kremlin friendly oligarchs. But I mean also, of course he would. He’s friends with Richard Desmond too. He’s one of those people where you’re glad he’s friends with other shithouses as that way, there’s absolutely no chance you’ll have to be friends with them.

That is just a tiny, weeny amount of the connections I have time to mention or can wrap my head around the complicated web of who knows who worse than the German time travelling series Dark. The report proposed a number of things that the government need to do, with one being an investigation into whether there was foreign interference in the 2016 Brexit Referendum which Johnson immediately rejected you know, in the way you totally would if it didn’t stress or bother you whatsoever. There’s no need for it apparently, as there’s no evidence there was any, like there wouldn’t be, if no one looked for it or did an investigation. He’d be the world laziest detective. Refusing to take a case, because as he hasn’t yet looked into it, it’s clear nothing happened. The rest of the recommendations are for new powers to allow the sanction or confiscation of oligarchs’ wealth that is found to have been used in serious crime. Its recommended that lobbyists who work for other governments have to officially register themselves which is like the political spy equivalent of when in an airport they ask if you’re carrying dangerous items and just hoping a terrorist will be honest. They also want the Official Secrets Act strengthened and for house of lords members to disclose more of their activities. Will any of this happen? Well Priti Patel said the report was out of date, which I mean, yes it was because her boss delayed it by 9 months. But she insisted that the government’s position in tackling foreign interference was stronger now and that she will be proposing new laws to tackle it, though I’m certain none of that will be to deal with anyone who has money and will mainly involve traps to catch refugees in boats with Patel insisting they’re coming over to steal the elections. Boris Johnson said the donation system doesn’t need changing and that donations from foreign citizens are illegal even though 14 cabinet ministers and members of the Intelligence and Security Committee have received donations from people linked to Russia. And look, this could all be absolutely nothing, and it does feel nice to be able to point fingers elsewhere and say, maybe it’s not entirely our government and our society being xenophobic shit rags easily swayed by three word slogans, which I mean it is. It definitely is. But maybe just maybe, it’s all also to do with that there Putin with his face like someone poked tiny eyes into a gooseberry. As Theresa May used to shout about her snooper’s charter, if you’ve got nothing to hide, you’ve got nothing to fear, and no it doesn’t really count if you won’t check any of the hiding places just in-case.

If you fancy the headfuck that is properly looking into all of this, check out Byline Times, Open Democracy’s investigation into Dark Money and Carol Cadwalldr for the Guardian and play the music from the Man From Uncle or something while you do for added effect.

And now back to Nick….

INTERVIEW WITH NICK PART 2

Thank you tons to Nick for being up for a chat, and to Klara at Penguin Random House for helping organise it. You can find Nick on Twitter at @Nick_Pettigrew and his book ‘Anti-Social’ is now available at all of those many, many places you can buy books from, but why not pick a small independent bookshop or book site, rather than say, Amazon and while he won’t notice in his bank account, somewhere Lex Luthor with a vitamin deficiency, Jeff Bezos, will get a sudden feeling of uncertainty and hopefully it’ll ruin his day.

Obvs this podcast is now having a wee break, but who would you like me to talk to when it returns? What guests are you keen to hear from? What political subjects haven’t I interviewed someone about or should do again? Get on the blower and drop me a line. Or rather, do it on more modern technology that doesn’t have as good slang names as telephones used to. Get in touch via the @parpolbro angry key basher page, that’s Twitter that is. Or the partly political broadcast group on inane posting, that’s the facebook page. Or use the contact page on lonely internet memory stealer aka the partlypoliticalbroadcast.co.uk site. Or send an emotionless hurried word spasm aka an email to partlypoliticalbroadcast@gmail.com. Or you could just use the blower because that’s clearly the best slang, but my landline has been defunct since last April so you’d probably leave a message with an automated voice that I’d never hear & it would stack up against the billions of spam call voicemails of frustrated robots trying to sell accident insurance, that will one day be received by aliens tracing sound waves back to the Earth and your guest request will be the one that tips the over the edge before they destroy our planet with a laser. As always, it’s probably just best to emotionless hurried word spasm.

END

And that’s all for this week’s Partly Political Broadcast, and in fact this run of podcasts, for now, it be a summer break. But of course, you’ll be needing one of them ParPolBro Hot Politcs Gossip Facts to get you through your staycations or Spanish return quarantines and this week, as Boris Johnson has now been Prime Minister for a full year…sorry one second *RETCHES*…sorry. As he’s been PM for a full year, which political figure had a more useless first term as leader? No, it wasn’t 20^th US President James Garfield who was shot 4 months into his leadership, then spent 3 months with doctors trying to find the bullet, and Alexander Graham Bell made a special metal detector just to find it. But they never did and he died. But I bet even on his deathbed he could still say person woman man camera TV without cocking it up. Nor is it King Umberto II of Italy, who managed to become King just 34 days before Italy decided it wanted to abolish the monarchy. We’ve got a prince that is almost certainly a paedo and gets excited about Pizza Express, yet we’ve kept our royals, so wow, Umberto must’ve been super shit. No, it’s quite hard to say which political leader has had the most useless first term because it’s either Trump or Johnson and I think the former telling 1,999 lies in 2017 is actually sort of productive, even if it’s not in terms of societal progress. But 1,999 lies is a fair amount of writing work, that I doubt Boris Johnson would even had bothered doing unless it was commissioned by the Telegraph. He definitely wouldn’t tweet them while on the toilet, he’s far too busy doing lines in there. Sorry, probably doing lines. Allegedly. We are living in the stupidist age. And that’s the last PARPOLBROHOTPOLGOSSFACT before the summer. If you enjoyed that or hated it, it doesn’t really matter as you can ignore this podcast for at least 4 weeks. Lucky you.

Cheers m’dears to Acast, my brother The Last Skeptik, Kat Day and Katie Coxall.

This will be back in the Autumn when Grant Shapps cottons on that he keeps getting chosen to do all the diplomatic abroad trips to places on the red list meaning he hasn’t made it to work since July and he gets upset when Dominic Raab insist the hooray no grant shapps party banner behind him is about a different one.

BYEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

This week’s show was sponsored by No Spain No Gain, a new holiday service that will fly you and your family around the coast of the Mediterranean country, before circling round and flying you straight home. No need for quarantine because you haven’t breathed in a drop of that corona-y air. See all the beaches but from really high up so you can’t definitely find a spot you can’t sit in. Eat, airplane food but there might be a choice of two sandwiches. Swim, no actually you can’t swim, you’ll be on a plane. I mean unless something goes really wrong. Which it might. No Spain No Gain, for all the fun of a holiday without any of the fun bits.

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