Eat Trout To Help Out – Budget 2021, Brazilian variants, Liverpool Mayor elections and Dr Chris Roberts on the state of British political media

Released on Tuesday, March 2nd, 2021.

Eat Trout To Help Out – Budget 2021, Brazilian variants, Liverpool Mayor elections and Dr Chris Roberts on the state of British political media

It’s budget week and what do you think we’ll all get in our financial stocking? Have you been good and donated loads to the Conservatives so that Rishi might not raise your corporation tax? Or have you been bad and held up society during a pandemic so you’ll be given nothing but a pay cut, and unwanted council tax raises? We’ll just have to wait and see. Plus Brazilian variants, Labour’s mess of the Liverpool mayoral elections and a long chat with Dr Chris Roberts (@Chr1sR0berts) about the state of the British political media.

Chris’s Roehampton University profile: https://pure.roehampton.ac.uk/portal/en/persons/chris-roberts

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THIS EPISODE IS TAGGED WITH: • NHS, Nicola Sturgeon, parliament, Patreon, podcast, political, political journalism, politics, PPE, restrictions, Rishi Sunak, Roehampton University, satire, schools, Scotland, self isolation, stand-up, summer holidays, taxes, The Last Skeptik, Tiernan Douieb, Vaccine, vaccines, virus

Transcript

Ep223

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Hello and welcome to the Partly Political Broadcast podcast, the comedy and politics podcast that keeps spending to get the country moving, by that I mean it’s run at a loss to ensure listeners go out of their way to avoid it. I’m Tiernan Douieb and as its budget week, The Prime Minister and protected wildlife site for whatever it is that lives in old hay that smells like bullshit Boris Johnson says he no doubt there will be a strong jobs recovery, so I think that means most of us will be employed on minimum wage to break rocks.

Who doesn’t love the Budget? That magical time of year where we all find out just what financial treats the Chancellor and Jar Jar Binks Pez Dispenser Rishi Sunak will be flinging our way this time. With Sunak’s ripe imagination based on whatever takeaway menu was last pushed through his letterbox, will it be an eat out to help out sequel called Dine Because We’ve Got No Real Clue How To Stop The Country’s Massive Decline? Perhaps Feed So I Don’t Have To Tax Tory Donors For Their Greed? Or will it be a brand-new plan to help people own a home in exchange for a lifetime of debt to provide financial anxiety that will adequately replace any you may have just managed to get over? What we do know is that Sunak faces a big challenge this year, and no it’s not just that he has never had to worry about money his whole life and now has to quickly find out what it is and how it works. The country has suffered a shock and Sunak says he wants to be honest with the public about coronavirus’s effect on the economy so that’ll mean a lengthy speech about how actually 10 years of austerity and rising inequality under successive Conservative governments along with a haphazard lack of Brexit plan, handing contracts to friends & policies that would suggest they’d been lobbied by COVID is why we’re really now watching our wealth die off like one of the 130,000 unnecessary virus victims and chances are high that when it does keel over, infection rates will mean only 6 people will be able to attend its funeral. But it’s much easier to say it’s covid what did it, which is only fair as it’s the virus’s fault that immigrants can’t come over to take the blame instead.

If Sunak wanted to be really honest, he’d say ‘you know what, we can make money whenever we like and that half of the national debt is actually money deposited by banks into the bank of England and the government can change interest rates on it how it likes but then you might all find out how it works and be angry that when it really, really comes down to it most money doesn’t actually even physically exist which is why there’s always money for things like spending nearly £3m on a TV studio for press conferences that has never been used but never any money for things like kids being able to eat but I suppose how can fed kids hypothetically host a press conference that won’t be happening so you know, what a waste. And all it’d really require is changing a few minus signs to plus signs on a handful of spreadsheets and we could all have a much nicer time with our entirely fabricated system that was invented by gold grabbing monks. Sadly, I don’t think ol’ Rishi is going to say any of that and instead it looks more like there’ll be a raising of council tax, cuts to the universal credit £20 boost and public sector pay freezes and hey that’s fair right? I mean it’s totally the worst off that caused the coronavirus by making it in their secret labs they store in their spare bedrooms and it was definitely them who didn’t close the borders in time, so frankly it just feels fair that they take the hit instead of all the completely different lowest earning people who did all the jobs keeping the country running during a pandemic. Oh wait.

There are concerns from six big Conservative donors who have warned him not to raise taxes as that could plunge the country into a recession. Which would be if anything a step up from the depression most of us have felt we’ve been in for the past decade. ‘Now is not the time for tax rises’ they’ve said, possibly because travel restrictions mean they can’t exile somewhere else in time to avoid them, and that might mean some of their barely earned money that they wouldn’t even notice was missing, might get used for a hospital or school and then they’d have less poverty to point and cackle at when driven around in their Bentley by an underpaid chauffer. But raising corporation tax does look like it might be on the cards, meaning it could be a fraction up from the massive cut the Conservatives made it to it years ago, because what is their entire endless political strategy other than a large scale version of smashing a vase, then supergluing two of the pieces back on and telling you it’s as good as new, while you know the only flowers it can now hold are some buttercups and chances are high you’ll slash your arms on it trying to water them.

Former Chancellor and used on the side of buildings to ward away spirits Phillip Hammond has said the government must risk unpopularity which is like warning James May he might have to risk being seen as uncool to anyone who still has a pulse. ‘You must tell some difficult home truths’ said Philip Hammond who was of course the man who said poverty didn’t exist because he hadn’t seen it, so it’s not as if he can be critical of anyone closing their eyes and hoping that means issues don’t exist. And of course, eager to be a viable opposition The Labour Party and are opposing a rise in corporation taxes too, because you know, their colour is red for the blood of the workers that were brutally squished by the giant corporations who trample over human rights like its race. It’s a smart move for the party though as this could mean they get some big billionaire donors and that way it won’t matter when they don’t win elections as they’ll still have at least 3 kitchens each and a job lined up for them in selling large weapons to governments who seem like large weapons. The Shadow Chancellor and partner of Popeye Annalise Dodds says Sunak needs to follow what’s in the interest of the country, not party politics because that’s Labour’s job and they don’t want to be distracted from their infighting by having to look at economic stuff. Jesus Rishi, be considerate for once.

We’ll see what Sunak announces on Wednesday or if you’re listening to this after Wednesday, I hope you’re enjoying the prospect of saving the country by taking 8 members of your family to a Nandos to get 3p off the bill and ensure COVID keeps going so we never quite make it to suffering from the aftermath. Sunak says that his party had gone big and gone early when providing support, and there’s more to come, making the whole thing sound like he’s a teenager boasting about having sex for the first time, despite everyone really knowing he was just premature, noisy and ultimately everyone involved was left unsatisfied.

What is going to get some money is the schools’ sector and Education Secretary and Joker in Batman the Animated series Gavin Williamson was so excited to announce the £6000 that each school will get that he insisted they could spend it on more teachers. Yes, as you all know, it’s only £6000 per teacher now, unless you get a rescue teacher or one from a friend who’s breeding them. I was about to say it’s remarkable that Williamson has no idea how much a teacher’s wage is, but it’s not remarkable at all. It’s exactly what we all expected. He’s the sort of man who if you asked what the cost of a pint of milk was, he’d tell you ‘well its free of course and delivered by a small boy on a penny farthing who’s only pay is the joy he receives from the gift of giving.’ Aside from inadequate funding Williamson also announced a plan for secondary schools to consider giving face to face summer schools to help students catch up, because what teenagers really need after being trapped in doors for ages is to be trapped indoors even more. Still I’m teachers will be really excited to know that they’ve been rewarded for working throughout the year without adequate protection gear or priority vaccines, by being asked to do more of it but during their holidays to make up for the time they weren’t able to catch COVID while at home. Secondary school kids will also have to wear face masks when they return but at least that means they can’t get caught chewing gum, which is a win. Plus they’ll have to have two COVID tests a week taken at home. Why are this government so focused on endless tests for pupils? Why can’t they just do one at home and then submit a set of COVID coursework at the end of the term, with a portfolio showing all the workings out? Seriously.

Schools back next week but the government message to everyone is – as new adverts confirm – ‘Keep going – Stay At Home’ which doesn’t make any sense. How can you keep going if you’re not to go anywhere? Saying that it does make it clear about what the government consider to be progress. 20 million people have now had their first jab and the plan is to continue to vaccinate people by age instead of job because frankly its just rude that people under 40 might want to teach or be in the police force rather than piss away their lives pointlessly, as its really ruining the narrative over making sure it’s their fault the future will be shit. Sorry, I mean more shit. There are considerations about introducing vaccine passports to help ease lockdown meaning that people who’ve had their jabs could have greater access to events or travel but many are concerned about this. Some because its more control over their freedom but those people would probably be fine and stop asking questions if the passports were blue. Others are more rightly worried it could lead to discrimination which I am concerned about, but as Leeds and Reading Festival have announced they will be going ahead in August, I find the idea that the only people able to attend will be middle class white pensioners really very funny. Six cases of the Brazilian variant have been found in the UK, but Health Secretary and Victorian spoon Matt Hancock insists it’s all under control as they know where 5 of the people who tested positive are and it’s just one of them that they have absolutely no details of and could be running rampant wiping themselves on everything in sight. Hancock says there is no evidence the sixth person didn’t follow the quarantine rules, but I suppose that’s because there is no evidence of them at all. The Health Secretary said the goal is to contain the transmission to those six individuals, so I suppose they’ve currently got an 83% success rate which is more than enough for Hancock to rehire himself for a large fee.

Brexit is going so well that the government have paid for adverts in all the newspapers to let us know that a whole 3 British businesses out of thousands are thriving because of it, so that’s alright then. It’s like classing a plane crash as a major success because two of the 300 passengers didn’t die. Actually, based on the numbers, that would be more successful than Brexit so far. You can tell it’s Spring because the European Research Group have resurfaced from hibernating in their swamp to demand that the Northern Irish protocol that they all voted for and backed, no needs to be scrapped actually as it’s no good. Poor them, if only they’d known what they were voting for or had actually ever done any research on Europe at all, aside from pointing a stick at a medieval map that showed across the sea were some monsters and then the edge of the earth. Big Brexiteer MP and small clay gonad Andrew Bridgen wrote to Minister of State and what if Aardman animated a doorstop David Frost, to insist that the UK ban imports of bottled water from the EU in return for ban of the import of shellfish from the UK to the EU. It seems a particularly stupid retaliation for something that he actively voted to make happen, but maybe he’s hoping if there’s less water here, there’s also less ways to dilute his already very wet ideology. Maybe, considering how much Bridgen’s already struggled to read, he saw ‘eau’ on a bottle and assumed it was direct from the commission. The Prime Minister has called for a campaign for British people to eat British fish in order to save the fishing industry, an eat trout to help out scheme if you like. Thing is, Brits don’t particularly like eating British fish, preferring bland white fish from abroad, much like our immigration policies.

In Scotland they are being far more cautious with the lifting of lockdown than England, as though their actual independence plan is just to out survive the rest of the Britain. Scotland’s first minister and star of Dexter’s Laboratory Nicola Sturgeon is facing calls to resign if she has indeed broken ministerial code by lying to Scottish parliament about allegation of harassment against former leader and Baron Greenback Alex Salmond. Thing is, as we’ve all learned from the Westminster government, what breaking the ministerial code really means is that you never apologise and get given an even bigger and better job. If Sturgeon’s lucky she might even get to be unlawful a few times too. Scottish Labour has a new leader in the shape of Lego figure Anas Sarwar, who has become the first Muslim leader of a UK political party which is progressive but luckily for the Labour Party he balances that out with politics that aren’t. Sarwar once claimed his family business didn’t pay a living wage to its staff because it didn’t have to, an excuse that only works if you employ zombies.

The Cabinet office dismissed complaints about tweets from the Equalities Minister and Simon from the Chipmunks Kemi Badenoch, by saying that she is personally responsible for her account. If that’s true and MP accounts are government ones, not only can we report the crap out of them but also can someone please hack them all and let them all have to individually ask Twitter for permission to get them back?

And the Supreme Court refused Shamima Begum permission to return to the UK, denying her, her British citizenship rights. On the plus side, she doesn’t have to spend 10 days in a quarantine hotel before living in a pandemic filled cronyism lead country, so they may well have made the decision in her best interests. The Home Office say they are pleased as being a former IS bride, Begum’s views don’t fit in with their fundamentalist hostile regime which involves forcing the country to go ahead with extreme beliefs.

And lastly, Labour deputy and Simpsons extra Angela Rayner has caused outrage in the right-wing press after claiming a pair of Apple Air Pods on her expenses for £249. Silly Angela, if only she’d paid a good friend £12bn to make some expensive headphones that didn’t work, that’d have been far better and it’s that sort of small scale thinking that’s why Labour will never get in government. Fetid ugli-fruit Donald Trump made his first speech since his presidency at the Conservative Political Action Conference and weirdly people willingly watched it even though they don’t have to pay attention to him anymore. That must be like leaving the dentist then returning after hours to ask them to drill into your gums just for kicks.

ADMIN

Hey, hey, hey ParPolBrods. How are ya? Its finally March, again, like it’s never ever stopped being March for a year. But hopefully at the end of this March, it’ll be a whole new world where we can all go out and do all the things we haven’t been able to do since last March. Well for at least a week before we then have to go back indoors again. I hope you are doing ok this week. I’m finding the tiny bit of occasional sunshine has markedly helped everything, even if it’s a bastard liar and I went running the other day thinking ‘ooh its basically the summer’ in my shorts and tshirt and then had frozen numb hands for the first 10 mins. At the same time, I think I’m now at least a year younger than I was before due to cryogenic freezing. Now I’m aware this isn’t very exciting to talk about but let’s all be blunt, there is very little to talk about anyway isn’t there? I mean I’m terrified of the small talk I’ll have when I see people again. ‘Ooh there was that one day where there were more parking spaces on our road than I’ve seen in a year and I don’t know why.’ Honestly, that was a talking point yesterday. So anyway, I’ve kept up going running since last year and have been going 2-3 times a week since and on Sunday I finally did a 10k for the first time and let me just say, I wouldn’t recommend it. Sitting is 100% more enjoyable. Saying that the post-run being able to eat lots was great and I wish someone had sold running to me that way before. No one has ever said ‘you know if you run a lot you can eat even more stuff’ and I swear if they had done, I’d have been running since I was about 6 years old. So, I now know for sure that were something to chase me at slower than 6 minutes 39 per kilometre for no more than 10.5km that I could get away. I guess that’s handy right? Either way, it was nice to achieve something even if it’s just a virtual small medal on a phone app that means nothing. Hey though, this here podcast, well not this one as it’s only just out, but the live one I did for the Leicester Comedy Festival, has been nominated for one of the comedy awards. The ‘community’ one which I think means they didn’t find it funny but it helped a food bank, so they have to acknowledge it. Anyway its very nice to be nominated for something and I have no idea what it means if I win, but I assume as it’s a community award I’ll prob have to share it, which would seem appropriate. So thanks to everyone who watched that one and has listened since and helped donate to the Woodgate Community Foodbank. Even though the comedy festival haven’t actually given me any of the ticket money yet so I haven’t even donated. They should probably have waited to nominate me till they do that otherwise for all they know I could spend it on a glamourous holiday to…oh yeah. Oh ok, fair enough.

Ta loads again for being here. Special ta loads to Christine for donating to the ko-fi this week, and also to all of you who’ve bought things at British Boxers as part of the 10% off promotion that I’ve been doing on this show with the adverts at the beginning. That’s worked out really well for both myself, and the lovely pants making team so really appreciate if you’ve done that. Hooray for vague attempts at ethical advertising! Take that Saatchi and Saatchi. Sort of. Anyway, should you want to financially assist this never ending slog to find ways to describe our increasingly awful looking Prime Minister – and I mean damn I know gigs are coming back soon but every offer I’ve seen for shows has said ‘well we can’t have many people in the show so the fee will be 50% less than normal’ meaning that after driving there or getting the train, you’ve lost money. Maybe I need to run to gigs? – sorry what I meant was you can of course fling dosh at the ko-fi.com/parpolbro site, join the patreon.com/parpolbro or via the Acast supporter button. Or buy something at british-boxers.com using the PARPOLBRO10 code. Obvs if you can’t do that, please just give the show a nice review on one of the podcast platforms, or just shout about it to your friends, enemies or even frenemies or enemends.

Ok some very quick admin this week. One is that you may or may not have noticed some odd noises in the background of the podcast recently and I thought I should clear it up that it’s not me being exceptionally flatulent. Oh no, I’ve learned how to make sure that isn’t heard on the microphone. No it’s the chair I sit on, it’s got squeaky and I don’t know how to fix it. I thought it important that you know incase a) you were just all spreading rumours about my windy issues or b) you were worried I was about to be attacked by mice, or c) I was recording the show in a very unsafe hot air balloon. Don’t worry, it is none of those things. I will learn how to make plastic chairs not squeaky and then it will never bother you again. Or I won’t fix it and then it’ll cover up when I am very gassy. I’m not sure. Ok thing two that I don’t know why I need to inform you of this but it feels polite, but I’m going to have a small 1 or two week break over the Easter bit because well, I’m knackered and I’m running out of ways to describe our increasingly fucked looking Prime Minister. Plus you’ll prob all be gallivanting around in the sunshine seeing friends then and the last thing you’ll want to listen to is this show, until you get bored of your friends a week or so later and come back. So, you don’t need to know that, its weeks away, but I feel like I’ve got to book the time off with you all so you know it’s happening and none of you try to book the time off first. Lastly, if you listened to last week’s show, the fire safety bill amendment didn’t get voted through and they didn’t even have time to debate it because they’re bastards. My MP sent me a very pissy reply to my email, then recalled the email which didn’t work, then sent the same one again. Brilliant. Anyway, as you can imagine while expected, that’s terrible news for those stuck in buildings with unsafe cladding so please do support their campaign if you can at endourcladdingscandal.org.

On this week’s show, it’s a very long un but a really interesting chat with Dr Chris Roberts, a lecturer in political journalism and I ask him all about them media. Plus, a teeny tiny bit about the Labour Party in the middle because I feel like I’ve been neglecting them lately, but then again, judging by the polls, so has everyone else so at least I’m on trend.

INTERVIEW WITH CHRIS ROBERTS

‘Whoever controls the media, controls the mind’, said Jim Morrison of the Doors, who likely said that so that so people would think he’d just watched too much news instead of taken heroin lots. It’s pretty clear that the mainstream media holds a good chunk of political power in the UK, and it’s very hard to convince yourself that with that great power it has any sort of great responsibility. It really doesn’t feel like Spider-Man would have that code of ethics working for a large-scale newspaper in 2021. But while it’s clear that without such a large amount of headlines labelling people as scroungers, the EU as some sort of all powerful evil overlords who ruin bananas or that going to the pub is more important than not wiping out half the population, then yes, we’d almost certainly be in much nicer times. But can all of this be blamed on the media or are they just another branch of the grim tree that is the establishment? Is it just that so much of the media is owned by the same few billionaire animated prunes who thrive on hate like particular unexciting Sith lords? Or do factors like the lack of money for investigative journalism mean all we have is a copy and paste machine driven by a need for drama and making sure no one is more than one ‘breaking news’ tweet away from an anxiety attack? Are the biggest journalists in the pockets of the Conservative Party and how can they fit there when they’re already stuffed with rolled notes from donors? Or is it more that having an unnamed source – because so many of these sources parents appeared to be lazy when it came to their kids’ monikers – having them hand you a story on a plate, is a lot more convenient than having to work out just how it is this week that asylum seekers with nothing more than the clothes on their backs are somehow also powerful enough to destroy the entire fabric of British existence? And when no one is currently happy with the major broadcasters, will the launching of supposedly ‘independent’ – you know in the way they can decide what shirts their backers can buy them to wear on screen – channels such as GB News or UK news make things much worse or be so bonkers and right wing that they’ll cause some sort of run back to the only mostly over the top news that we all knew and hated before?

Well, this week I asked all of those Qs and more to someone who specialises in knowing about that there media. Dr Chris Roberts is a senior lecturer at the Department of Media, Culture and Language at Roehampton University and specialises in political journalism, and he very kindly agreed to let me ask him absolutely loads of questions about it all. As this weekly podcast is largely dictated to by what’s in the news, it only makes sense for me to really find out if I’m part of the problem and should instead be getting my info from the way the wind is blowing or the tealeaves or something instead of the old MSM. Now very quickly, before you hear it, there are a number of clicks and bumps through this interview, which is because unfortunately for Chris, his laptop died just days before we spoke and he had to use an iPad for the zoom call. Turns out iPads like to record every single tiny noise in the room. It doesn’t bother me, but I know some of you will probably write in and tell me it sounded like we spoke through the Young percussionist of the year awards or something, so please don’t do that. Also, this is a long chat because well, there was a lot to cover. I’ve left it all in because Chris gave fascinating answers and hope you’ll enjoy. Here is Chris:

INTERVIEW WITH CHRIS PART 1

And we’ll be back with Chris in a short second or two but first…

MIDDLE BIT – VERY QUICK

You have to give credit to the Labour Party don’t you? I mean they’ve really gone for a whole rebrand with everything from not wanting to tax the rich, not really doing any oppositioning and now it seems they’re even eschewing the idea of democracy. You might remember that Liverpool’s Labour Mayor and flesh potato Joe Anderson was arrested on suspicion to commit bribery, which aside from the potential crim bit also meant he was suspended from the party. Because as you know, they only accept bribery if its referred to as lobbying. Anderson agreed to step aside from his duties till his bail term was over, and was still planning to run for re-election in May, which would’ve been his third term but then his bail period got extended till Feb and obvs he now can’t mayor nuthink. So that meant Labour needed a new candidate pronto and a load of people put themselves forward, which then got narrowed down to a shortlist of three: Wendy Simon, the current acting mayor, which is who they get to be the mayor on TV obvs. Then there’s Ann O’Byrne, the former deputy mayor and Lord Mayor Anna Rothery. All three are some sort of mayor already meaning that when it comes to be all mayory, it makes sense they’d be on the list. But of course trust Labour to focus on making it all a night mayor instead. Members were told there’d be two weeks of campaigning before the vote, but ballots didn’t get sent out when they were meant to. Then it was announced the selection process had been suspended and all three candidates had to be re-interviewed because what if the acting mayor had only played the part in a school play or the lord mayor was actually a mayor lord or something? For three days there was nothing, the Labour announced they would re-open the selection process and actually none of the previous candidates could re-apply. It was very odd and everyone basically suspected that the party were concerned about the candidates, particularly Rothery as she was an open supporter of former party leader and pinto bean Jeremy Corbyn. The whole thing looks shifty and its not a great image to be scrapping an all female shortlist either, but Labour are pushing ahead with the new selection process. Liverpool’s Labour councillors tried and failed to scrap the entire position of mayor, and several frontrunning candidates have stood down saying applying would be like crossing the picket line which probably meant the party leadership would’ve disqualified them anyway for even suggesting they’d side with workers. It’s looking very likely as a result that Liverpool may end up with an independent Mayor and a loss for Labour. Still better lose than have a broach church of a party right? I mean that’s definitely seemed to have been many of the party’s main aim for some time.

There’s a lot of shenanigans going on with Constituency Labour Party members too with a number of members being purged and several now exiled members planning to strike against the party, as well as a group of African, Caribbean and Asian members who say with the delaying of the Forde report which looked into allegations of racism in the party, that the leadership is treating them with contempt. I guess nothing will make them more likely to appeal to Conservative voters than screwing over female candidates without any transparency as to why and treating people of colour with disdain. All Starmer needs to do now is ruffle his hair so it looks like he’s been pulled backwards through a hedge and I’m sure they’ll pull back from being so, so behind in the polls to a party that’s let 130,000 people die. I mean, why wouldn’t you want to emulate that level of success?

And now back to Chris…

INTERVIEW WITH CHRIS ROBERTS PART 2

And that is the end of the interview, but Chris got in touch with me the day after we finished recording and asked if he could add this to his answer to my question about the issue of political bias vs lazy journalism:

EXTRA BIT FROM CHRIS

Thanks tons to Chris for that fascinating chat. You can find Chris on Twitter @chr1sR0berts and you can also find him teaching at Roehampton University in the Department of Media, Culture and Language. You can read some of Chris’s research and his thesis at the pure.roehampton.ac.uk website too. Also, worth saying that Chris mentioned Alexie Sayle’s gag about the financial crash and he’s recently been doing a podcast too, and it’s properly brilliant. I’ve been a fan of his for many, many years and it’s a proper delight hearing him go off on unprepared political rants and comedy ideas. Its called the Alexei Sayle podcast and it’s very worth subscribing too. I’ll pop a link in the pod blurb.

And of-course should you have anyone or anything or anywhere you’d like me to interview, no wait, I can’t interview a place as I don’t like their position on things, ha! Sorry, I mean any recommendation can of course be sent to @parpolbro on Twitter, the Partly Political Broadcast group on Facebook, the contact page at partlypoliticalbroadcast.co.uk or email me at partlypoliticalbroadcast@gmail.com. Or make your recommendation only accessible to those who have special vaccine passports and I haven’t had mine yet and probably won’t be able to read it till July or whatever so you’ll just have loads of very confused people thinking it’s not as good as a sticker from their doctor to say they’ve been very brave. As always, it’s probably just best to email isn’t it?

END

And that is all for this week’s Partly Political Broadcast podcast. Thank you for tuning in, if you are one of the 4 people who listen to this on a 50’s style wireless radio. I don’t actually know if there are 4 people doing that, but I hope there are, and that they spend every second of this podcast thinking that it’s a weird comedy sci-fi about a dystopian future that they don’t understand, before eating a scoop of Brylcream and shouting swears at the bread delivery boy. Yeah, I have no idea how things were in history. Anyway whatever time era you’re from, if you do like the show why not bloody well tell someone about it either by shouting it loudly at them from a window or through a loudhailer in the park, or by shaving it onto a nearby cow that they’re likely to pass? Alternative you could just say nice things on the social medias, give the podcast a stonking 5 star review on one of the many podcast platforms that allow such things and maybe even donate to the ko-fi.com/parpolbro, patreon.com/parpolbro or Acast supporter pages. Or wire me hard cash or put it unmarked notes in a bin bag on my street. But not on a Friday or the bin men will get it and I’ll be gutted.

Thanks a bunch of perfectly ripe bananas to Acast, my brother The Last Skeptik, Kat Day and Katie Coxall.

This will be back next week when as the Brazilian variant runs rampage around the UK, Matt Hancock insists that its under control as they haven’t taken any details of anyone whose tested positive for it, so therefore it doesn’t really exist.

BYEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

This week’s show was sponsored by Eat Trout To Help Out! The fishing industry is floundering because of our fishy deal, so be a cod guy and get sucked into the bait from this red herring by eating mackerel and haddock for every single meal, every day for Britain. Top your shreddies with a cold haddock for breakfast, pop a raw mackerel in sarnie for lunch and think of England as you snack on an eel before bed. You go eat all the fish because we cocked up and don’t want to. This has been a message from the British Government, trusting the country to go along with all our codswallop hook, line and sinker.