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If only the government didn’t demand everyone return to work then they wouldn’t notice all their colleagues watching porn. Yes, another normal week in the constantly declining standards of British politics involving bills that are basically hate crimes, unlawful policies and tractor porn. Gags are once again somehow eked out from among the horror and also there is a chat with Marc Owen Jones (@MarcOwenJones) about digital authoritarianism and his new book.

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

• Marc Owen Jones on Twitter – https://twitter.com/marcowenjones
• Digital Authoritarianism in the Middle East, by Marc Owen Jones (pre-order the book) – https://www.hurstpublishers.com/book/digital-authoritarianism-in-the-middle-east 
• Botometer website (indicates the likelihood that a Twitter account is a bot) – https://botometer.osome.iu.edu/ 
• This Is Not Propaganda – Adventures in the War Against Reality, by Peter Pomerantsev – https://www.publicaffairsbooks.com/titles/peter-pomerantsev/this-is-not-propaganda/9781541762138 
• Peter Pomerantsev on Twitter – https://twitter.com/peterpomeranzev
• Claire Wardle on Twitter – https://twitter.com/cward1e 

All the usual ParPolBro stuff:

• Get 15% off at British Boxers with the code in the episode – https://british-boxers.com 
• Nowtflix – http://nowtflix.co.uk
• 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

Ep270

Hello and welcome to the Partly Political Broadcast, the comedy politics podcast that most listeners don’t mean to find but it just pops up on their phone while trying to google tractors. I’m Tiernan Douieb and this week as British politics further collapses so hard into rock bottom the floor falls through to reveal we can still indeed go further, the Prime Minister and like a dog had a go at a jumble sale Boris Johnson says that watching porn at work is unacceptable, that must be why he’s so rarely at meetings.

‘Most MPs have a sense of responsibility’. Not my words, but the words of the Business Secretary and man who bares an expression that looks like it was rejected from the design for a vegetable mascot Kwasi Kwarteng. Do they though? Perhaps it’s similar to Spider-Man’s spider-sense, whereas MPs feel their responsibility sense tingle they leap out of the way to avoid it at all times. Who is it a sense of responsibility to? The evidence from the past week has only really shown yet again that many seem to be focused solely on self-gratification, with soon to be former MP for Tiverton and Honiton Neil Parish, the blueprint for every sex pest character in a country-based ITV thriller, taking the onanistic nature of Conservative MPs to its natural conclusion. Parish was revealed to be the MP that watched porn while in the Commons and has now resigned because it turns out he doesn’t really need anyone’s help to finish himself off. He said he had suffered a moment of madness, taking leave of his senses and a sense of decency but having been a Tory MP for 12 years its likely both of those were lost some years ago. Apparently Parish, found the porn in question when searching online for tractors, which begs the question of what search terms he had used. Plowing hard? Reverse ramming? Massive arse farmer? Whatever it is, he says his mistake was returning to that site while at work, but I guess everything has to pass through the commons a few times before MPs are done with it. Yet this story is revealing for many reasons and not just because it proves the backbenches are full of wankers.

It comes, if you’ll pardon the expression, after a week of revelations about sexism and inappropriate behaviour in parliament of the kind that in any other job would get you fired on the spot, but Parliament still has no human resources department probably because it might seem silly when much of what they do there is focused solely on removing resources from humans. House of Commons Speaker and Aardman creation Sir Lindsay Hoyle and former leader of the house or at least that’s what her CV says Andrea Leadsom are calling for a drastic overhaul of Westminster and I agree. Probably best just to get rid of it all then start again from the beginning I reckon. Like one of those reboots that pretends the previous attempt didn’t happen as its too embarrassing to admit it. Of course the government line, much like with everything else they do is that they don’t admit it and prefer to infact pretend it isn’t happening or it’s someone else’s voice entirely. Attorney General and what if they made a Trolls film about one who was a real shithead Suella Braverman said that while some men in parliament behave like absolute animals, its actually a problem that started in wider society. Ah damn, if only these politicians were able to do something about society, how it works and the laws that bind it. Such a shame they are completely powerless to its ways and struggle in their voiceless positions as representatives of the public to do anything but succumb to an overwhelming urge that they must live life as though it’s a 1970’s lewd comedy film, Confessions of a Prime Minister. While Kwasi Kwarteng insisted there wasn’t endemic sexism in Parliament, and all of this was just some bad apples. Rotten cox I presume but even if it is just some bad apples, the growers who run the orchard had picked them as representatives of the types of apple they take pride in and placed them on display for everyone to see.

Isn’t it however what’s expected from a group of people who sit there and vote on a myriad of ways to fuck society? When Braverman agreed that there needs to be a discussion on moral standards, it is probably so that she could learn what they are as they’ve been largely absent in her career that has been rife with racist comments and wanting to abolish human rights. Was she referring to the men that made sexist comments as the absolute animals or just the MPs that didn’t go to private school or believe in any policies that don’t involve bringing back chain gangs? If you look at everything that was pushed through just before the Parliamentary term ended, Parish’s brief glimpse at rural romps pales in comparison and makes you almost wonder if more MPs watched porn on their phones during work hours then they might be distracted from taking part in truly appalling behaviour for at least 1 to 2 minutes. The Nationality and Borders Bill is now set to become law, because the Home Secretary and human paper cut Priti Patel is only ok with something travelling safely through its passage if it’s a bill that will stop anyone else doing so. The Bill goes against the Refugees Convention, means the UK has no responsibility to provide safe routes for asylum seekers and means people are criminalised for wanting to stay alive. Still, I suppose it’s only fair that the UK government treat people from abroad the same as they treat the British public. The Home Office will be able to remove people’s British citizenship if they were born in another country, which is terrifying now, but I give it a few years before we’re all so desperate to leave here but too poor to do so, that we’re queuing up outside Patel’s house swearing we’re actually from somewhere else. The Policing Bill was also passed meaning that it’ll now be much harder to protest for much of the British public, and the Elections Bill was passed too meaning the Electoral Commission is no longer independent and the you’ll need ID to vote, which might be tricky when Boris Johnson is also talking about privatising the passport office so it’ll likely cost you 4x as much to get your named spelled wrong and spend 3 days asking an online bot where your passport is because some Evri driver dropkicked it into a river. So, to summarise, you can’t complain about anything, no one can come here to see how shit it is, and voting will become irrelevant as fraudulent campaigning will be overseen by fucking Michael dropped fruit Gove. Are we a democracy or merely a shit awful low budget Secret Cinema experience based on the film Misery?

Of course, the Labour Party provided great opposition to all these bills by leader and man with all the impact of a piss dribble on a forest fire Keir Starmer not even turning up to vote against any of them. Then again, he is dealing with a vicious media campaign that says he had a beer and a curry in Durham during a time when there wasn’t a lockdown and the Chancellor and man who definitely still laughs at the Compare the Meerkat adverts Rishi Sunak said everyone should go out and eat things to help the country. Of-course the problem for Starmer is he doesn’t want the public to think he broke rules or helped the country as either could have an adverse effect on how they see him, which currently isn’t at all. Instead, the party have been capitalising on it being 25 years since inspiration for the warp face filter Tony Blair became Prime Minister, because nothing would bring voters fond memories of a Labour government than reminding them of 1997 while the news is filled with stories of an illegal war. Despite just hoping everyone wishes it was 1997, Labour do have a plan to reduce the cost of living by having a windfall tax on the profits of energy companies, which is better than the Chancellor who simply said it would be silly to give more support to people for their rising energy bills. Yeah, so silly to help people now when they need it, when he could save the country loads of money by leaving it till everyone freezes to death. It’s such an interesting way to use silly, that definitely shows he thinks the British publics needs are along the same relevance and importance as a foam string that ruins carpets and causes asthma. Does he play silly games with his kids where he sits them down and tells them they’re having their pocket money cut off but the rent is due and if they don’t pay it they’ll be out and no point asking for freebies as he can’t help everyone? Boris Johnson’s plan for helping people with the cost of living is to reduce health and safety measures because again nothing will reduce the cost of living like not doing it anymore and just dying. The Prime Minister has suggested lowering the legal limits on the number of adults needed to supervise children, probably because he’s never supervised any of his and therefore saved loads of money. I mean that’s got to be a vote winner right? Who gives a shit about their own kids? If they weren’t so insistent on living in the future we’d save loads of costs on trying to prevent climate change or educating them or, well everything. With every few that get lost or are taken out by a kettle due to a lack of people watching them in nursery, there’s thousands saved and it can only benefit us all by ensuring we, as a species, have even fewer generations before the end. The other totally safe area to slash safety regs is with cars, as MOTs could only be needed every two years and again, nothing will save costs like your car being written off beyond repair so you won’t have to spend anything on fuel or insurance ever again. Why doesn’t the Prime Minister help everyone out and remove all health and safety legislation for everywhere? It’d probably save money if train tracks could be built right through hospitals and why are we spending all this money on zoos and animal food when tigers could roam the streets and eat unsuspecting victims for free?

Yes, Neil Parish inspecting backhoe loaders is grim and awful, not least because his entire body looks like it’s made of foreskin, but in reality he was affecting maybe 2 people’s lives. Well depends on how many were in the video he watched. Maybe up to 6 people’s lives. Then he resigned. Whereas the high court this week said the government’s decision to send untested Covid patients from hospitals back into care homes in March 2020 leading to over 20,000 deaths was unlawful, yet despite watching all those people’s lives get horribly fucked, the Prime Minister is still in his job. The excuse is that neither he, nor the former health secretary and the embodiment of the feeling you may have sharted Matt Hancock knew Covid could be transmitted asymptomatically at the time, but they were told it was several times in the two months previous. Sure, that doesn’t mean Johnson actually attended any of those meetings or had any idea what they were talking about, but you’d think he more than anyone would know that it’s very possible to ignore the signs that someone is carrying something inside them that may well change your life and it’s better to be safe than sorry. The Chancellor Rishi Sunak didn’t resign after it turned out that his wife had paid money just to avoid taxes, and he’s now been cleared by the cabinet’s ethics advisor and what if a bellybutton just lived its own life Lord Geidt, who investigated everything within about two weeks by deciding before he started that the Chancellor was kushti. He is the ethics advisor and that doesn’t mean he has to check their ethics, merely advise when its fine not to have any as there’s fuck all he can be bothered to do about it. I mean, what a great money saving solution to not even investigate. So poor Neil Parish for having some dignity. I mean not very much, he watched porn in the House of Commons, but yet somehow that is more than all those MPs who happily watched people die in the Commons or worse, while they were at an illegal party. Politicians used to resign for all sorts of things that now, in light of Johnson’s government, seem petty, but Parish took a stand, or at least one part of him did, for having shame and embarrassment at being a fucking awful human being. Parish said of his resignation, that it was almost as if a weight was lifted off him, which isn’t the best phrase to use considering, but what a head fuck it must’ve been to be in the Conservative Party for so long then realise that out there is a whole industry for giving pleasure rather than taking it away and stamping all over it. He is not a good person and yet, compared the Prime Minister and his cabinet, Neil Parish is a missionary man. Apparently. Ahem.

In other news, the Culture Secretary so called because her very existence is like a fungal threat to your health Nadine Dorries unveiled her white paper to supposedly support the nation’s broadcasters but her plan to do that seems to be to sell them off. I suppose it’s a bit like having a kid you hate, so deciding it would be best to let them be adopted by someone who’ll use them as a servant. Part of this paper involves the privitisation of Channel 4, despite the fact that it doesn’t cost the taxpayer anything as it’s all paid for by advertising revenue and its various parts like FilmFour. But Dorries says its being held back from becoming like streaming services like Netflix, which is losing money and subscribers by the week. Perhaps Dorries thinks C4’s content will be even better if no one watches it, as she loves GB News and that has an audience total of just her and only when she’s drunk. Which to be fair does mean she’s a regular viewer. Dorries also mentioned how well the privitising of C5 did for that channel, which is curious as it was never publicly owned, unlike Dorries every time she opens her mouth. Still the only bonus of the Conservatives being insistent on selling off every aspect of Britain is that when racists shout ‘Britain’s our country’ they will be factually very wrong.

Co-chairman of the Conservative Party Oliver Dowden who I’m sure could be melted with a magnifying glass and a sunny day, complained on Twitter about a reported Labour & Lib Dem election pact that he also says is secret. I’m not sure how it’s both of those things at once but maybe he’s just taking into consideration the Prime Minister’s inability to read things unless it has his name in them. Dowden says the plans deny voters a proper democratic choice unlike when the Conservatives paid the DUP £1bn for an alliance without any public consultation or offered the Brexit Party peerages to stand down seats in the 2019 election or formed a coalition government with the Lib Dems in 2010. I suppose it’s a bit like when at school the kid everyone thinks is cool has all the friends for the first few years then they realise actually no they’re an evil dickhead and even the other evil dickheads move on and everyone else gets friends instead. Dowden is just finding it hard that being the bully’s sidekick hasn’t worked out well for him and there’s not even a chance a kid’s party would side with them. Bringing the electoral commission in house and voter ID that will deny millions of people the right to vote is also denying voters a proper democratic choice but I suppose that is also different as Labour did help with that one by not voting against it.

And lastly study has shown that post-Brexit trading rules that came into force caused a major shock to trade, dropping imports from the EU by 25%. Minister of Brexit opportunities and part time boatman for the River Styx Jacob Rees Mogg, has decided to delay implementing full customs checks from the EU for a 4^th time as it turns out the best opportunity Brexit has given is the ability to avoid it for as long as possible. Mogg says that enforcing Brexit checks would have been an act of self-harm, which then I suppose means Brexit was either an early sign that serious help was needed or the beginnings of a teen emo phase for the country, which I worry might really upset the racists that voted it for it when they see the next phase is making a lot of the country black.

Local elections on Thursday with 4111 council seats up for grabs in England, and all local authorities in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland Assembly elections too. Experts say there are two elections at play, because they like to forget any countries other than England exist in Britain, but also because the cities are likely to go Labour because they don’t understand parties other than them or the Conservatives exist, while towns will stay Tory because they fucking hate themselves and wish everyone was dead. The swing seats to look out for are mostly in playgrounds, that will probably be sold off regardless of who wins.

ADMIN

Yeah, local elections week. Who you voting for? I actually don’t know yet but I do want the Conservative councillors round here gone so might have to vote Labour. Argh. Its like a joke I used to do about British politics endlessly being ‘this bucket’s full of shit, maybe if I piss in it all the shit will go. Oh no, now it’s full of piss I’ll have to shit in it again.’ Yes it’s pointless voting for blah blah blah but it wouldn’t be if everyone didn’t say that and actually did it. It’s a new polling station for us this week though which is exciting. It’s usually in a library but on Thursday it’ll be in a church so I’ll get to walk around saying stuff about how at least the state and the church is separate like Ben Bradley said, or something. Hopefully subliminal messages about Jesus actually helping poor people will sway voters to not vote Tory but I doubt it’ll make much difference and they’ll probably just think he was too woke. Is it bad to put a cross next to a candidate if you’re in a church? Isn’t that a bit, you know, harsh? I have no idea. Anyway I really hope the government get a good kicking and I may well stay up late on Thursday to watch the results come in as I mutter to myself ‘oh of course they’ve now won all the council seats because it turns out us English people think criminals have character’.

Big thanks this week to Autumn Penkridge for joining the Patreon and to Trina, Andy and Christine for the ko-fi donations. I realise I did do the hardest Patreon push I’d ever done last week and I think it resulted in all of one new donator so you know, worth a try again. If you listen to this and can afford to donate please, please do. I whinge about this to everyone at the moment and on here, but my ahem proper job, yes it is, of stand-up comedian just doesn’t pay anymore. Cost of living has pretty much made travelling to do shows pointless, so I am trying to survive on writing work and this here podcast, which er, isn’t working great at the moment. It’s weird when you go ‘what am I good at? What else can I do except gigs?’ and then you realise the only other places to shout at drunk people who don’t care is in a pub and they won’t pay you for that. So you know, tricky one. What I’m saying is, patreon.com/parpolbro if you fancy giving me even £1 a month for zero extra content at all, or ko-fi.com/parpolbro if you also fancy giving me even £1 a month but in a different website. It’s nice to have a choice right? More democratic than the British political system I reckon.

Only other thing is yes, I’m aware I’m not mentioning the situation in Ukraine much and that is because well, there developments every day and it really doesn’t feel like there’s much I can or would want to remotely make light of in any of it so I’m just sort of leaving it. However, I’ll try and do some next week and also trying to look for more interviewees to talk to about one of the many areas about it, like energy politics or its effect on global politics or something. Shout out to Olga who asked a few weeks back if I can find someone who’s Russian and against the war to talk to about the effect on Russian citizens and I’d be keen to do that but my searches have so far been more fruitless than a fast food menu. Still in need of guest suggestions like always so any angles, ideas or people you think I should talk to, hit me up but you know in a nice gentle way that has no hitting in it.

On this week’s show, I am talking to Marc Owen Jones about digital authoritarianism and if you don’t like that then I’m going to tweet that you’re a Nazi.

INTERVIEW WITH MARC

My main reason for being on social media is to use it as yet another way to filter out brain thoughts without having to just yell them at people on the bus. But unfortunately, as has been mentioned a number of times on this podcast, social media has long since stopped being just a place for jokes with typos in or thread of celebrities looking like inanimate objects, but it’s now also a constant political battleground. Social media is now key in setting what the main news story is, spreading divisiveness and wasting absolutely hours of your life away responding to people with mostly numbers and flags in their name who insist the way to win an argument is to just be too stupid to understand anything. Now, you probably remember all the investigations into Cambridge Analytica and the amount of money the Conservatives spent on targeted social media campaigns to manipulate votes because your dad believes everything on Facebook, yes, he does, even Farmville, or even the time Labour HQ spent money just targeting adverts at their former leader so he thought everyone was seeing them when they weren’t in an incredible and entirely in character self-own. But what if I told you that digital media manipulation was rife across the globe, and weaponised trends, targeted campaigns and bots are a regular part of many government’s game plans to deceive the public and push through disinformation? Oh, you’d totally have guessed that. Yeah ok, that’s fair. But how do you work out which hashtags were started by an authoritarian regime, and how many were just started by a bored middle-aged man who hasn’t been able to persuade their daughter to leave the playground and has now been there for over two hours and really it’s her own fault if she falls off the climbing frame. Oh god, sorry, that’s actually wildly inaccurate and deceptive of me, as I’ve never managed to start a trending topic in my life. And what effect is this digital media manipulation having on our lives, apart from wasting copious amounts of it trying not to reply to someone telling you to ‘do your own research’ despite them having done none?

This week I spoke to Marc Owen Jones, who is an expert in disinformation, deception and digital authoritarianism. As in, he researches, writes and lectures in it, not that he himself does that. Well unless he does and he’s pretending to be someone who doesn’t but in which case he’s done a great job so fair play either way. No I’m only joking. Marc is definitely an expert in how social media is being used to control the political sphere and his twitter is a constant delight and indeed scary ride through how many trends were indeed started in erroneous places and I don’t just mean the House of Commons. Marc is an assistant professor of middle east studies at Hamad bin Khalifa University in Qatar and his book titled ‘Digital Authoritarianism in the Middle East’ is out in June, so I asked him to come on the podcast and talk all about it and tell me just how often I’m engaging with no one. On Twitter that is, not just with my failing attempts to grown my audience. It was great chatting with him, so hope you enjoy too. Here is Marc:

INTERVIEW WITH MARC

Thanks to Marc who, as I mention in the interview, I have been following on Twitter for quite some time and honestly his studies on where trends have come from are both fascinating and often make you feel like ‘oh I’m part of the problem’ which is nice. Marc’s upcoming book is called ‘Digital Authoritarianism in the Middle East’ and will be out in hardback in June published by Hurst, but you can pre-order it now and yes of course the link in the podcast blurb, I’m no amateur. And you can also follow Marc on Twitter @marcowenjones, and if you happen to study at Hamad Bin Khalifa University in Qatar then I guess you might bump into him there too. I’ve no idea what the crossover of ParPolBrods and students in Qatar is but you never know.

Digital Authoritarianism in the Middle East

What other peoples should I talk to? I feel like after 6 years of this podcast there are still some areas of politics I’ve not covered. I’m aware of a few of them which I’m still trying to find guests to chat about, but I’m probably missing loads because well, isn’t all of life politics? Maybe except the pigeon that sits in the tree opposite our flat and always stares at me, but then maybe I’m ignoring some major pigeon political conflict that requires him to be there. Apart from starey pigeons, do send all suggestions for who and what to talk to and about to partlypoliticalbroadcast@gmail.com.

END

And that’s all for this week’s Partly Political Broadcast podcast. Thanks for lending me your ears though I hope there’s not a fine for late returns as I’ve definitely lost a few under stacks of things and I may have accidentally put some in the recycling bin. I’m very sorry and hope it was worth it. If you did enjoy sacrificing your audio consumption time to this weekly noise then please do consider sponsoring it happening by donating even £1 a month to the patreon and patreon.com/parpolbro, or just buying me a coffee at ko-fi.com/parpolbro. Maybe even review the show at Apple Podcasts or similar pod hostels but mainly why not tell other people that like the unpopular combination of comedy and politics to tune in and give it a whizz? Actually that sound gross and I don’t want any whizzes so maybe they should just listen.

Gracias to Acast, my brother the Last Skeptik and Kat Day.

This will be back next week when unexpected local election results get muddled up with a local papers advert’s and all seats go to a school hall that needs them for its summer concert.

BYEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

This week’s show was sponsored by XXX-Tractor Fans, a site for all your necessary tractor porn needs but that most people find while googling air circulation methods.

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