Blue Crime Stories – Johnson still not going, French election, Rees-Mogg’s notes and a chat with Andrew and Sarah at Azadi Charity about the Afghan refugees that should have refuge in the UK

Released on Tuesday, April 26th, 2022.

Blue Crime Stories – Johnson still not going, French election, Rees-Mogg’s notes and a chat with Andrew and Sarah at Azadi Charity about the Afghan refugees that should have refuge in the UK

The podcast returns after two weeks to find that, well, sadly, the Crime Minister is still in post. He can’t go because apparently that’d cause instability for the country and we can’t have that at these, er, historically stable times. Johnson’s law breaking, Indian free trade deals, the French election and an interview with Sarah and Andrew (@Mr_Andrew_Fox) at Azadi Charity (@azadi_charity) about the Afghans who should have refuge in the UK.

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THIS EPISODE IS TAGGED WITH: • Boris Johnson, Comedy, Conservatives, Keir Starmer, Labour, NHS, parliament, parpolbro, Partly Political Broadcast, Patreon, podcast, political, politics, Priti Patel, Rishi Sunak, satire, stand-up, The Last Skeptik, Tiernan Douieb

Transcript

Ep269

Hello and welcome to the Partly Political Broadcast, the comedy politics podcast that you can downstream from all of the internets, even the UK’s best one, while playing on a tennis pitch. I’m Tiernan Douieb and this week as adult disguised as a child in a 90s undercover cop film set in a school Emmanuel Macron was re-elected as French President, beating Marine Le Pen, the far-right leader who looks like the cross between someone who runs a café and a person who professionally strangles dogs, nothing says hope for the future quite like being relieved only 42% of a country’s voters are Nazis.

It must be odd for Emmanuel Macron, with his smile like he’s just been told he’s allowed an ice cream because he ate all his greens, to know that the only reason some of the French public chose to have him as their President again, is because they hate him but at least he’s not a fascist. He has of course vowed to unite France but in a way over the last 5 years in his first Presidential term he did, it was just that he brought them together in hatred for him and a percentage of people just hated him enough to prefer the possibility of the sort of person who’d have melted in an Indiana Jones film. While it was a low turnout for a French election, it’s still concerning that 40% of that low turnout opted for Marine Le Pen as their ideal leader and it can only be confusing to Russian President Vladimir Putin who seems to be morphing into an uncooked bagel, that France may now need to be ‘de-nazified’ too but that’s his fault for funding them for so long. Maybe if he really wanted that outcome for Ukraine, he should stop the onslaught and instead plough tons of money into an electoral candidate who’ll be too stupid to actually win anything.

As reasons to have a leader go though, at least he’s not a Nazi could be seen as a damn site better than the current Conservative excuse for the continual human rut that is Boris Johnson, a man who shares 99% of his DNA with a clogged drain. Johnson is now the first sitting British Prime Minister to break the law, having received so far, one fine from the Met Police for attending a party during lockdown when it was illegal. Contrary to what you might think, I find that surprising. Not the breaking the law bit but that he did it while sitting as I assumed he was mostly lying on the floor passed out after all the boozing. It has often been said that the UK Parliament is a bubble that does not represent minority groups and yet what could be more progressive than a leader who can now speak for the criminal underworld?

But he can’t be removed as Prime Minister because, according to co-chairman of the Conservative Party and man who mosquitos use as profile boost that at least they have more purpose on Earth than he does, Oliver Dowden, Johnson leaving No.10 would lead to instability. Oh god, and who’d want that? I mean right now Britain is like Jonny Sturdy over here with its solid plummeting into recession, its firm 500+ deaths a day from Covid and its fully balanced food supplies where supermarkets are having to ration sunflower oil presumably threatening the future of greased poles as no one can afford the energy bills to cook with it anyway. We wouldn’t want to shake the reliable foundations of government when right now it contains the incredible line up of a Chancellor Rishi Sunak, half man, half you tube advert for a ponzi scheme who has also broken the law by attending an illegal party and whose wife spent money to be classed as a non-dom just so she didn’t have to pay tax in the UK. Though to be fair if I was married to someone who was so embarrassingly fucking up the country, I’d probably pretend to live somewhere else too.

Three cabinet ministers are facing allegations of sexual misconduct, as are two shadow cabinet ones, and 56 MPs overall but I suppose they must feel empowered by a system that allows them to continuously shaft the country however they please. The Mail on Sunday, the tabloid that is to newspapers what poo bags are to the luxury luggage industry, ran an article last weekend insisting that anonymous Tory ministers have accused the Deputy Labour leader and star of a British version of Russian Doll where her character just deals with the same shit every single day of her parliamentary life Angela Rayner, of plotting to distract the Prime Minister by crossing and uncrossing her legs while sitting on the opposite benches to him. Which might have meant to be sexist slur at her but just makes it sound like our PM not only breaks the rules he makes, but also can’t focus at all if he sees women. If they’re really insistent that he can’t go, can we at least send him to one of those dog training schools to sort him out? The piece suggested that Rayner uses these tactics of you know, being female and sitting down, because she can’t compete with Johnson’s Oxford Union debating training. If that’s training I’d ask for my money back as you’d could get given tips on shouting and having no clue what you’re talking about from any overtired 4 year old for free. Johnson tweeted that as much as he disagreed with Rayner on every political issue but deplored the misogyny directed at her because if I was him I’d be self-loathing too. The Prime Minister also messaged her directly which we think was in support but for all we know could well have been an aubergine emoji. Johnson has threatened to unleash the terrors of the Earth on whichever Tory MP made the claims about Rayner, so at least we now know why he’s insisting on investing in so much fracking. Culture Secretary and only person in Britain exempt from having an air bag in her car as it’d be unnecessary Nadine Dorries sent the exact same tweet about the article as Johnson did because nothing says supportive quite like a copy and paste job. Apparently, they sent the same message because they’d reached the same view and used the same words. If this means that the Conservatives are operating as one hivemind with no individual thought behind any of their eyes then actually yes, I think this does sound like a valid reason. Dorries had just the past week been interviewed on a TikTok video by another Tory MP, where she explained that her job as Culture Secretary was helping people to downstream content and play on tennis pitches, so there is every chance her computer had malfunctioned and the only way to get her back online was to plug her directly into the Prime Minister’s drive and run it from there. Dorries said people that criticised her were mocking her dyslexia, which you think she’d like as that’s basically Conservative policy. Also, pretty certain it’s not a condition of dyslexia that it causes you act like a callous fucking idiot all the time. Still no chance of her words being laughed at again when they’re all Boris Johnson’s. Incidentally if you do downstream videos, it will break them and increase their chances of being eaten by a bear.

Yes, British politics is so stable that Nadhim Zawahi would probably get the public to pay to heat them, and so we can’t get rid of the man that is causing all the distractions or it’d just distract from the real issues that the Prime Minister’s behaviour keeps distracting us from. Issues like the war in Ukraine which our government is leading the fight on, by you know, not being at all involved in the fight. Is this what virtual warfare means now? Where you don’t remotely take part but just tell everyone you are? Then very importantly there’s the free trade deal with India that the Prime Minister is conveniently negotiating right now so he could be out of the country for a bit and get dressed up in a turban. Or at least that’s what the caption said but I have a feeling the people of India saw the way he behaved and assumed he must have a severe head injury that needed treating. When questioned about the Indian Prime Minister and ethnonationalist ewok Narandra Modi’s close relationship with Russia, Johnson insisted that Modi had asked Putin what on earth he’s doing and that what Indian’s want is peace, which must be why he’s mainly been discussing changing licensing rules so the UK can sell them more weapons. Still, being friendly with Russia, policies that plunge many of its citizens into poverty, poor management of Covid outbreaks and a constant oppression of Muslims, it’s no wonder Johnson thinks Britain would get along with India, we’re basically already twinned. There’s all that important stuff see, and the government also has to roll out their new international law-breaking plan to send all asylum seekers to be processed in Rwanda. Which I’m certain only came about because the Home Secretary Priti Patel, the sort of person that’d organise a kids parties where attendees have to run a real medieval gauntlet, saw a 5 star review for Hotel Rwanda on the internet and assumed it’d be a nice place for people to stay. According to Patel, the most humane thing you can do for people seeking asylum in the UK in order to escape persecution or death, is to send them to an unsafe country where they may come under persecution or die. If Patel was in the Red Cross she’d provide aid by helicoptering into a warzone, picking up those in danger and dropping them off in a different warzone before saying ‘a change is as good as a rest you know’ and flying off. The plan has been condemned by human rights experts, other Conservative MPs and even the Archbishop of Canterbury and if god exists why your face so small Justin Welby who said the plan was ungodly. Now, I agree with his sentiment but really all actions are ungodly unless you’re suddenly able to shoot lightening from your hands or cause a plague of locusts to appear. Despite this many Conservative MPs took to social media to complain about the church interfering with their plans, and constipated potato Ben Bradley said ‘we separated the church from the state a long time ago’, which if that’s true, why do I always say ‘Jesus fucking Christ’ whenever I read the news about anything the government have done? The Church of England is the state church, the Queen is the head of state and the head of the Church of England and 26 bishops sit in the House of Lords as the Lords Spiritual which is no way as exciting as the name sounds and they should really be all the top ghosts.

Patel says critics of her plan have no solutions, which they do, it’s just that they mostly involve safe routes, caring about people and her being consumed by a hellmouth. Its not only the moral aspect though, based on Australia’s disastrous attempt to do this, it could cost over £1m per asylum seeker which pleb hater and former Chief Whip Andrew Mitchell said would be cheaper to house all the refugees in the Ritz and send all the kids to Eton. Brilliant, I’m very up for that plan and it could mean we one day have a Prime Minister who understood the plight of people trying to get out of a warzone alive, unlike our current one who puts all his energy into getting out of his trousers whenever possible. The Home Secretary blamed those against the plan for being derogatory towards Rwanda, though it was only 10 months ago that the UK condemned it for human rights abuses. Oh, wait no, that’s probably exactly why Priti Patel likes it. You can’t put a price on saving lives she told parliament which must be why she’s willing to spend millions ending them.

The Prime Minister can’t go yet right, with all of that? And anyway, can’t a guy break a law in his life without people getting up in his grill? As some have pointed out he’s probably not the only sitting PM to have broken the law, just the first one to have got caught which means he’s not only a crim but an idiot as well and can’t we have sympathy for that? Johnson said sorry and pretended he meant it, and he paid the £50 fine which I’m sure we’ll find out was actually covered by a Tory donor who in exchange has now been allowed to buy all of Britain’s air. And alls the while Johnson insists he didn’t mislead parliament when he said he hadn’t broken the law, which means he was just confused by the law and haven’t we all been confused by the laws we’ve made and enforced and other people got life ruining fines for breaking? And isn’t it inspirational to other idiots out there that you could be stupid enough to not know if you’re at a party or not and still be in charge of nuclear weapons? The Prime Minister escaped a fine for a drinks party in the garden of No.10 in May 2020, but more fines could still come as the Met are investigating 10 more events. And it seems now, finally, Johnson is looking like a liability to the party with rumours the local elections on May 5^th could see them losing more seats than the world’s worst musical chairs player. Many Conservatives running for council seats are campaigning as ‘local Conservatives’ though that could be just to assure voters that they aren’t also registered as non-doms. Steve Baker who is member of all the worst Conservative groups and has a forehead that looks like it’s trying to run away from the rest of his body, has demanded Johnson quit and says he’s lost confidence in him. Which is impressive as Steve Baker has had confidence in some of the worst ideas I’ve ever heard of so he must think Johnson is even worse than the Covid Recovery Group or European Research Group. MPs voted in the Commons for the Priviledges Committee to investigate whether Johnson misled parliament, and a source has leaked that the Sue Gray report is looking so bad for the Prime Minister he’ll be forced to resign. But hasn’t he now done something that should have forced him to resign every week since he became Prime Minister? Lying to the Queen, unlawfully proroguing parliament, letting the Covid death toll hit 180,000, not wearing a mask when he should have, getting dosh for someone he was sleeping with, the flat refurbishments, the Russian connections, the mess with Irish sea Border, the list goes on and on. And he’s still there, so forgive me for being pleased MPs voted for him to be investigated again while also being certain it’ll be announced that the Privileges Committee is to be replaced by Boris Johnson’s favourite aunt and someone called Joris Bohnson who looks very familiar but I can’t quite pin point why. What could the Sue Gray report actually contain that will make him go? Will it reveal he has a tattoo saying ‘fuck David Attenborough’ or that he once put a cat in a bin? It’ll be down to the local elections and then whether his own MPs have finally had enough, but even now there are still some insisting he’s the man to lead the country. If that’s true and we need someone who doesn’t know where he is half the time and falls into a stupor if he looks at a woman’s legs, then I worry that its repeats of 70s sitcoms are actually to blame for the decline of the country. Oh well, at least he’s not a fascist. Er….

In other news, Minister for Brexit Opportunities and the image your kids draw when they describe their nightmares Jacob Rees Mogg has said all civil servants must stop working from home and left a note on many of their desks saying ‘sorry you were out when I visited’. Which is a stupid waste of time as they’re working from home so won’t see it and because there’s only room for 60% of staff in the government offices most of them hot desk. Not something Rees-Mogg would understand as he can only imagine children working at the same thresher machines so they know exactly where to put their tiny arms so they don’t lose them. Flexible working and the ability to do more work from home was actually part of the Conservatives’ 2019 manifesto but I suppose that’s why we should’ve known there was no way they’d do anything to make it work. I am certain that the working from home concept is completely alien to people like Rees-Mogg because whenever he’s at home he does fuck all because his nanny or butlers are doing it for him. Then again, he doesn’t do anything at work either except leave stupid notes, most of which I’m sure are for people who had they seen him coming would have gone home just to avoid him.

In are there are Conservatives who aren’t criminals news, the MP for Wakefield and another Conservative whose taken all his style tips from Hammer horror films Imran Ahmad Khan was found guilty of sexually assaulting a 15 year old boy and could rightfully face time in jail. He has been expelled from the Conservative party which was surprisingly quick of them, as they usually support decisions that ruin children’s lives. Khan still hasn’t resigned his seat meaning a by-election hasn’t yet been scheduled, but its not going to be easy for the Conservatives to keep that seat if their only proof of being tough on crime is giving so many crooks jobs it’ll keep them too busy to do other misdemeanours. Meanwhile Conservative MP for North West Leicestershire and creation of several body flip book accidents Andrew Bridgen was found guilty of lying under oath by the high court, over the exact circumstances of his departure from his family business and also sent all the company’s directors abusive messages. He then said he’d actually won the case he’d lost and is now under parliamentary investigation. Still, can’t be easy for Bridgen when he was just getting on with lying like he always does and someone brought an oath to it. Maybe the Conservatives need to embrace this new criminal identity and start campaigning for the country to become a scoundrels outpost, start apprenticeships for pirates and save loads of money by scrapping the entire prison system and instead sentencing people to work for the party. That way at least Rees-Mogg will be happy staff are chained to their desks. How has this show gone from political comedy to bloody true crime? Still, at least it might be popular now.

ADMIN

Yeah! Hello ParPolBrods. Its back, you’re back, I hope, Boris Johnson is still fucking there. I so nearly recorded a mini-episode several times over the last few weeks. Ooh Rishi Sunak may resign I’ll record an episode. Oh no, no he didn’t. Oooh Johnson has been fined it’ll all kick off, ah no, nothing’s actually happened. In a weird way, it is a sort of stability isn’t it? A certainty that no matter what stories come out about just how shitty awful they are, fuck all happens. I didn’t mention Labour much this week but it does very much still feel like their game plan is like Macron’s of ‘at least we’re not them’ which is just the bleakest reason to vote for someone. We’ve also got no ideas but we’re less shit, but then maybe that is the most representative of British people. It’ll all likely be shit so we’d just like the least shit please. Anyway, I hope you had a good Easter weekend or Passover or Ramadan which still has a few days left. I was touring the kids politics show that myself and Tatton at Simple Politics have restarted after our enforced break in March 2020, and the show now has a much more ‘what you can do to change stuff even though you’re kids’ vibe about it, which is great. But we ask the kids to say what problems they want to fix during the show, and while one was about homework and there was some weird talk about firing llamas out of cannons, generally it was all climate change, things being expensive, the war in Ukraine and that we have a Prime Minister who broke the law. These kids are aged 6 or 7+ so they’re so aware of all of it and it just makes me wonder what the lasting effect will be? Will they be despondent and apathetic or will they all get savvy and start lying all the time and being shit at their work in the hope they’ll one day end up as Prime Minister? I just don’t know. I also went to Guernsey last week for the first time ever and it’s a lovely place. Their political system is highly confusing but I know their head of state is a bailiff, which is funny as that’s what I’d call someone who takes all your belongings away. Which I suppose is what Johnson does to Britain but we dishonestly call him a PM. It was very nice being on an island for a day where, as the world news was war, Johnson lying, and all the other horrors, Guernsey’s main news was that some CBD gummies had too much CBD in them and locals handed in 83 gummies to the police. Wonderful stuff. I love how concerned they were that people may get too chilled out.

So not much to say this week except this show is now back for a bit and thanks to Conal and Loretta and Hector for donating to the ko-fi. I know a few of you have left the Patreon and completely understand in these times of everything costing, that this is a free podcast and so if you can’t afford to donate to it, please don’t. But also the patreon.com/parpolbro and ko-fi.com/parpolbro really do help me afford to be able to spend time making this, and I keep seeing comedy podcasts that are doing super well and have 10,000 Patreons and they’re all recording shows in the Bahamas, ok maybe not that bit and they do also do loads of bonus stuff which, well, I can’t be arsed to. This show currently has 51 Patreons and I adore you all, but if any of the rest of you can spare even £1 a month and join up, it doesn’t half help. In fact it full helps. 110% helps. Oh no, I’ve lost the maths fans. Come back! I used to have a gag about how we’re all the 99%, apart from the life coach wankers who are the 110%. Yeah I don’t do that one anymore.

Super serious but necessary chats this week, about a charity and situation that needs cash much more than me, so you know, donate there first because I’m not a villain. But then donate to me after. Thanks.

INTERVIEW WITH SARAH AND ANDREW

You might remember last year, when the US and the UK curiously decided the best way to honour the 20^th anniversary of not having the Taliban in charge of Afghanistan was to leave all the doors unlocked and put a big sign in the window saying ‘Nobody’s home, let yourself in’ so that, to use their full name, the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan could have another go. Since last Autumn, the country has been under a dictatorship of extreme rule, and the Taliban have managed to do what was previously thought to be impossible and make the US invasion and subsequent decades of instability look almost like the golden years. This new modern updated Taliban swore they were different though and far more Westernised, but it turned out that only referred to how the West is far more oppressive now so they could really fit in with other global leaderships. I mean for example, not to point out similarities to anywhere in particular, but they made several promises about protecting all ethnic groups and vowed to respect woman and then haven’t actually done either of those things. The country is in deep recession and people are in deep oppression. Luckily last year, the UK government stepped up and said they would assist thousands of Afghan refugees who aided the British army and the Home Secretary Priti Patel insisted people should not flee to the UK as safe routes would be set up. Yet, here we are a year after the UK’s Afghan Relocation Assistance Programme was set up, and eight months after things really kicked off and got scary, and thousands of Afghans who are eligible to come here are still trapped under Taliban rule. Though you know the British government did help a man who sounded like an old bicycle, evacuate heaps of sad dogs. By that I mean, actually rescue animals, it’s not a euphemism for taking a shit, even though it sounds like it. So, refugees who have helped the British military rank in importance to the British government somewhere beneath pets, and what’s worse now is that because there aren’t any safe routes to get here, anyone that does try is likely to be detained or relocated to Rwanda like the Home Office thinks they might want to complete a living under oppressive regimes tick list. So, what happens to those in danger in Afghanistan now? And has the situation in Ukraine taken up all the government’s capacity for creating schemes for asylum seekers that don’t actually work? And how do we stop Disney making a tasteless live action film about those sad dogs where Chris Pratt does all of their voices?

This week I spoke to Sarah Magill and Andrew Fox at the brilliant Azadi Charity. They are a crisis response charity, helping Afghans to get refuge in the UK. Sarah is one of the founders of the charity and a practising barrister, and Andrew is the charity’s ops manager and former British Army officer who, as you will hear, served three tours in Afghanistan. I asked them just how many people are still stranded in Afghanistan, just why it’s so difficult to help them relocate here and if the war in Ukraine hasn’t helped the efforts to help people from another terrible situation. I did something I don’t usually do for this interview too, in that I cut out a few of my responses because, well, I don’t think they helped. If you listen to this show, you’ll know I find it hard to articulate the horrific ways in which refugees are portrayed in the media or by the British government and generally can’t fathom why you wouldn’t just want to help people because, well, they’re people. So I sad that several times during this chat because what I really wanted to do was shout ‘THAT IS SO FUCKING AWFUL AND TERRIBLE’ and didn’t. I’ve cut that out meaning that instead you can just get Sarah and Andrew telling you why it’s so fucking awful and terrible and what they are brilliantly trying to do about it. Here they are:

AFTER INTERVIEW WITH SARAH AND ANDREW

Thanks so much to Sarah and Andrew for that. And also to Sarah, a different one, at Azadi for helping set that interview up. You can find Azadi charity at azadicharity.com, on Twitter @azadi_charity and on Instagram as azadicharity. Please do donate and help them out if you can afford to, they’re doing brilliant work.

You know the drill, but as well as DIY awareness, you also know what you want to hear on this show. So any recommendations for people to interview, or indeed politics things to find people to interview about, then put that drill down – unless you’re in the middle of building stuff, then you know, finish that first – and then email me at partlypoliticalbroadcast@gmail.com.

END

And that’s all for this week’s Partly Political Broadcast podcast. If this show caused reactions including laughter, enjoyment, informed thoughts or fulfilment and didn’t cause outrage, despair, spontaneous human combustion or a rash on your lower knees, then please do recommend it to others that you know, do a donation to the ko-fi or join the patreon and why not even give it a review on one of them podcast sites?

Big thank yous to Acast, my brother the Last Skeptik and Kat Day.

This will be back next week when its revealed that Boris Johnson has been given another fine by the police, and he looks set to go, but then receives a third fine which due to the rule of comedy then makes it funny. A 4^th, 5^th, 6^th and 7^th fine once again put his career on halt but then a further 2083 fines allow supporters to say it’s now in the levels of absurdity that are really funny and he stays in his job.

BYEEEEEEEEEEEE

This week’s show was sponsored by the new True Crime podcast: Blue Crime. Politics is scarier than fiction. Were you party to a crime scene or was the party the crime scene or is the crime scene the whole party? From the really obvious stuff that’s happening right in front of you and we can all see it, to that time Michael Fabricant was spotted in the woods and everyone called the RSPCA and the general crime of someone finding Matt Hancock attractive. Blue Crime: Where misdemeanour isn’t just someone that might distract the prime minister.