Further Reading

Transcript

PPB EPISODE 44

Hello I’m Tiernan Douieb and welcome to the Partly Political Broadcast episode 44 a show that is to comedy and politics what the Trump Administration’s alternative facts are to actual real life facts. On that note I’m pleased to announce that since we took a break a couple of weeks ago, the Trump administration press secretary Sean Spicer has kindly looked at the stats of this show and tells me we have 1 million and a half listeners. Though I’ve looked at the evidence and sadly I’m fairly sure it’s only actually 4 of you and most weeks you’re all half listening. So yes, the podcast is back, and I’m so sorry to have left you alone during the last few weeks but it’s ok, I return to you now at the turn of the tide. Not so much a Lord Of The Rings reference or a possibility of hope, but more a comment on what may happen to the seas with President Trump’s climate change denial policies.

Yes President Donald J Trump is now the bloated orange head of America as he was inaugurated as the 45th Commander in Chief last week in a ceremony that could only be described as a cross between a CD from a service station bargain bin, and the sort of address a president might give in a low budget disaster movie about volcanoes starring Dean Cain. Barack Obama, the 44th president of America, finished his last week with an eloquent speech, awarded his Vice President Joe Biden the medal of freedom which means he no longer has to live in a lamp anymore or something, and granted more pardons than an elderly British man being served by a foreign waiter. Then like a dark version of the ending of Toy Story 3, he handed over his toys to their new owner Donald Trump, knowing full well that its unlikely any of them will be safe in hands quite so tiny.

Trump’s inaugural speech focused mostly on nationalistic tone, saying that from now on, it’ll be America first but I’m betting that’s just in all their World Series sports that only have teams from America in. Like something the Joker might say before he electrocutes everyone, he said they were transferring power from Washington and giving it back to you the people, stating that the forgotten men and women of America will be forgotten no longer. Which is ironic as judging by the size of the crowds at his inauguration it seemed he forgot to tell them to turn up. Yes, in the most unsurprising move ever, the first major area of Trump’s focus in his first few days as President has been disputing that his inauguration wasn’t Despite newly appointed White House Press Secretary and baked bean with hair Sean Spicer stating at press briefing on Saturday that there was no way to count how many people attended the inauguration, he also said that a million and a half people were there. A ludicrously hyperbolic number to just throw out and you wonder if Trump will come back from his first G7 meeting saying he met with a million and a half world leaders. Spicer said the press and everyone that had been there and used their own eyes and ears and said otherwise were lying and wrong. Because there’s no better way to empower the people than by denying they have any credibility. Crowd scientists – how do I become one of those? I’m asking for some friends – Crowd scientists have stated Trump definitely had vastly less people at his inauguration than Obama did, but also that the global Women’s March on Saturday had more people at their Washington protest than people came out for Trump. Well I suppose technically those protesting were there for Trump but just not in the way he might’ve wanted. You get the feeling the only way he’ll really be a crowd pleaser was if he was in the stocks. According to councillor to the President and regular flame retardant pant wearer Kellyanne Conway told NBC the White House were not lying about the crowd size, they were just giving alternative facts. Hmm yep. In the same way I guess you might not have hit someone with your car you were just giving them an alternative lift, how me sitting down all day is just doing alternative exercise and how it really seems that with him already lying just a couple of days into government, Donald Trump is definitely going be alternatively great for America as President.

Meanwhile in the UK Theresa May has finally set out her Brexit plans and it seems they are to leave the EU entirely, single market included but make sure Britain still has access to the single market. Essentially she has told the European Union she doesn’t even want to be friends anymore but they’d be better be ready when she booty calls at 2am drunk and needing it bad. May has told the EU that they need to give the UK a fair deal or they’ll be crushed and you know, I’m sure a tiny island who’s main exports now appear to be providing the rest of the world top quality political farce straight from our parliament has all the power when negotiating with a union of 27 countries right? It reminds me of a kids comedy show I did a few years ago where a 7 year old boy told comedian Nick Doody that he could definitely kill him using karate he’d made up himself.

Oh and it turns out that Downing Street covered up a serious malfunction with the British weapons deterrent system Trident just a few days before MPs voted to spending £40bn updating it. It seems much like most of the government’s economic plans the missile veered completely off target in its first test in 4 years. Though lets be fair if you’d had four years off, you’d be a bit rusty too right? I’ve only been away for two weeks and I know exactly how it feels. Would MPs have voted differently if they’d known? Defence Secretary Micheal Fallon refused to answer any questions about the nature of the test but told parliament that was a success which I guess means the missle was meant to fire straight down the centre but instead went far off to the right. I was against renewing Trident on account of it being an out-dated system and costing money that could be used for public services, but now I know it has the potential to backfire like a karma driven ACME bomb, I say keep it.

Phew, so that’s a few bits but lots more to catch up on this episode including a more in-depth Brexit fall out and Trump movements so far, yes yes I really can’t stop trying to find ways to make everything he does sound like farting, and there’s also an interview with top skeptic and fake news exposer Michael Marshall about, well, fake news exposing. So thanks for sticking with the show despite the break, it is very lovely to be back. I mean, I assume you’ve stuck with the show, I won’t know until this goes out, but hopefully you’ve missed having me panic weekly about the state of the planet and not at all enjoyed ignoring everything since January 2nd. Which is what I did. I had an actual holiday with sunshine and everything. It was a belated honeymoon as my wife and I asked friends and family to contribute towards a holiday rather than wedding gifts and January was the first time we could feasibly go. Yes, we essentially got them all to pay towards us being as far away from them as possible. So I’m sure you’ll be glad to hear I had an amazing time, only got slightly sunburned, ate a fuckton of mangos and realised that swimming with dolphins is actually a hugely stressful experience on account of them being able to Micheal Phelps it everywhere while I’m in the middle of an ocean accidentally inhaling seawater and losing my diabetic pump cannula and a flipper. Anyway, all back now, and this podcast will be too for the foreseeable future unless my wife and I can find a way to get the same sort of gift donations if we renew our vows on a yearly basis. Speaking of donations, thanks also to those of you who donated to the Patreon over the past few weeks, it’s very much appreciated. You will hopefully notice a slight sound improvement, especially in the interview, due to some fancy new soundproof Bluetooth headphones that I’ve taken to wearing most of the day now, just around the house and that. I’d highly recommend it. It definitely makes the news a lot better. I’m not sure it’s been great for my marriage but I can’t hear if it isn’t anyway, so win-win. Anyway, if you wish to donate you can head to patreon.com/parpolbro and I will put any monthly earnings towards better things for this show. Thanks for the extra few iTunes reviews as well. If you haven’t rated this show on Apple’s core site, see what I did there? Then please do as it helps get new listeners in and please keep spreading the word too. As always I’m keen to hear your thoughts on the podcast. I had in my head that I’d really work on making it better but instead I drank a lot of rum, so if you have anything you think this show could improve on or guests I should try and get please do drop me a line @parpolbro on Twitter, the ParPolBro group on Facebook or partlypoliticalbroadcast@gmail.com. If you suggest the show needs a new host I will find where you live and post you weird pictures of my knees dressed as Liam Kneeson and you won’t like it.

Before we crack on, I’m writing a new show for the Edinburgh Fringe this year and will be previewing and touring it around so I’m in Leicester at the Leicester Comedy Festival on February 9th which will be a very ropey show indeed, then two shows at Angel Comedy in Islington in London on 21st and 22nd Feb, then Glasgow Comedy Festival on March 12th with Bec Hill and the best comedy festival in the world Machnylleth Comedy Festival on April 29th by which point I should have at least one joke. There’ll be more dates soon too but if any of those are near you, do come along. Details and links to everything are on my own website tiernandouieb.co.uk and you can sign up to mailing list there too where I mostly tell you to listen to this podcast and come to those gigs so really, it’s probably not worth it unless you like repetition.

Right, on with the shitshow! Firstly, this!

NORTHERN IRELAND

The Deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland Martin McGuinness from Sinn Fein resigned on January the 9th which incidentally was my birthday. Not that that has anything to do with him resigning. Well I don’t think so anyway, that’d be a weird present. No, McGuinnes said he resigned because of the Renewable Heat Incentive Scandal, a failed renewable energy incentive that will cost the Northern Irish public £500m. The scandal also known as Cash For Ash, which sounds like a kickstarter for a 90’s band, involved a new energy scheme where people would get paid to use renewable energy. However the Democratic Unionist Party’s Enterprise, Trade and Investment minister Arlene Foster failed to put proper cost controls in place and it ended up being that businesses and non-domestic users earned money just by heating their properties. Many people heated empty unused properties just to rack up a profit, and ended up being a total waste of energy, figuratively and literally all at once in the way that only makes journalists and crap podcasters happy.

Anyway to cut a lot of hot air short, Arlene Foster became the First Minister of Northern Ireland and while it seemed like the Cash For Ash was entirely her fault, she blamed the new Enterprise, Trade and Investment minister Jonathan Bell as he didn’t shut the scheme down quickly enough, mainly it seems because he wasn’t in the job at the time, which to be fair, is a pretty great excuse as they go. After failed calls for Foster’s resignation and a failed vote of no confidence, McGuinness resigned as under Stormont rules and the Good Friday, if the deputy First Minister resigns, the whole office ceases to exist. This means Foster is now out of a job too. However the DUP say McGuinness resigned in order to kick start an early election, now scheduled for March 2nd, though Sinn Fein say they won’t come to an agreement with the DUP unless certain issues are resolved. Due to health reasons McGuinness won’t be running for re-election so at the time of recording so Health Minister Michelle O’Neill will take over. But if Sinn Fein and the DUP can’t come to an agreement after the election, then the British Conservative government will be in control of Northern Ireland until they do. So a lot of people gained a lot of money wasting a lot of energy and now there’s a dispute in Northern Ireland between political factions while a Conservative British government rule over things? Yeah, I’m sure it’ll be fine, right? I suppose that’s one, less profitable way to heat things up.

PAUL NUTTAL FOR STOKE BY ELECTION – TRISTRAM HUNT

Tristram Hunt, a man who looks like how I imagine an anthropomorphised mop would look, has resigned as Labour MP for Stoke On Trent on account of him just falling into the job of Director of the Victoria and Albert museum. That’s the sort of thing that happens to the son of a Baron. Though to be fair, a museum suits him as he’s trained as a historian and when he was Shadow Education minister, most of his policies were extremely ancient and archaic. However his leaving the Stoke On Trent seat is controversial as just under 70% of the constituency voted Leave in the EU referendum so it’s debatable whether it’ll remain a Labour seat. What makes it all worse is that new UKIP leader and evil Moby doppelganger Paul Nuttal is running in the election too in the hope that UKIP finally get more than one elected MP. Nuttal thinks he has more in common with the people of Stoke On Trent than Tristram Hunt did, though having been to Stokey, I’m not sure many of them are racist, NHS hating potatoes who’ve failed to be elected to parliament 4 times already. Nuttal says he’s changed his mind since stating that the NHS should all be privitised, and that money we give to the EU should instead be used for hospitals, quoting about £32m a day. Fact checking proves it’s about £9m less than that, so it seems if Nuttal does get in the NHS will still be underfunded, allowing it to be privitised even easier, proving he’s actually learned fuck all. The by-election takes place next month.

INTERVIEW PART 1:

The Oxford Dictionary word of last year was Post-Truth, a word that describes the actual story behind why the mailman failed to deliver your package that time even though you were in and saw them sigh, stick a card in your door then sit in their van and eat a sandwich. Sorry, I mean post-truth is a word that means ‘relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.’ Pah! What a load of nonsense! Do you remember in the good old days in Britain when we didn’t use namby-pamby words like that we just hit each other with planks of wood and set fire to foreigners because they kept coming here and covering things in locusts? So yep, post truth is a bit like all the arguments we saw about the Brexit referendum in the UK, in the increasing anti-immigration sentiments across the Western world, and the entire basis for the election of President Donald Trump in the USA who got voters on side by promising to return America to an imaginary golden age and to build a wall because let’s face it, everyone loves a wall, except Humpty Dumpty. Fake News has been a big part of the past year with websites like InfoWars, Breitbart and White House News being filled with inflammatory made up stories, that are repeatedly shared on social media until people believe it to be true. The PizzaGate story where many were convinced Hilary Clinton ran a child sex ring in the basement of an Italian restaurant because of a tweet that became an article on fake site YourNewsWire, eventually lead to a man turning up at the restaurant with an assault rifle in order to save the children. It’s a bizarre notion that such a thing would be real, especially as pizza restaurants make enough dough already – no I’m not sorry – but people believe these stories to the extent that a man who thought he was saving children is now locked away for attempted assault.

While Facebook have vowed to clamp down on Fake News sites, what can we actually do to find out what’s real and what’s not? I mean, are the sites I’m getting my info from real? Is this podcast real? Are you real? Well the person to ask is Michael Marshall. Michael is a sceptical activist who does hundreds of things including working with the Good Thinking Society who promote finding truth through evidence and through his Bad PR website and other work he has exposed several fake stories in papers and now lectures journalism students on how to check exactly what’s real news or not.

So by the end of the chat I had with him, none of you should ever have to turn up to a pizza restaurant with a gun again. Unless, you know, they accidentally put pineapple on your American Hot because let’s face it, that’s fucking unforgivable.

Here’s Michael:

We’ll be back with Michael in a minute. But first:

So after months of contradictory positions, incoherent speeches, Michael Flatley and weird leaked dubious intelligence reports on how Donald likes Russian prostitutes to wee on the bed, we are now in the first few days of President Trump’s time in office and whether those leaked intelligence reports were true or not, willingly choosing to sleep in a bed of piss feels like a perfect analogy for what America has voted to do for the next four years.

Skipping past lying about how many people were at Trump’s inauguration- something Sean Spicer has actually backed tracked on slightly in his first official press briefing today – or that he did a speech in the memorial room at the CIA HQ that barely acknowledged employees who’ve died in service and instead went on about how great his own inauguration was and how the press are liars, or how his press secretary said they gave him a 5 minute standing ovation afterwards even though CBS news says they brought a team of 40 who sat at the front and were the ones applauding. And also skimming over the fact I read Jon Ronson’s Psychopath Test recently and that Trump hits every single one of the 20 items on the Hare PCL-R checklist to see if someone has psychopathic tendencies and avoiding how weird his relationship with Melania is, or how his entire family look like they probably have a special room in their homes where they feed on dead bodies, or how his press secretary says he isn’t focused on statistics just on Americans doing better though without statistics how will he know? Anyway, forgetting all that for a minute I thought it was most important to look today at some of the policies he seems to already be signing off on and other indications of what he might do.

Trump has already signed the global gag rule, something that sounds like it’s about all the best jokes I write that everyone everywhere loves, but sadly is actually an anti-abortion policy that stops the US funding any organisations worldwide that offer or advise on anything to do with family planning. That’s even if the US dollars used for funding, aren’t used towards those areas of the organisations at all. So that’s $600m a year that now won’t help over 21 million women a year in developing countries or those in conflict that currently have unsafe abortion methods. The global gag policy has been brought in and removed by several presidents. Clinton got rid of it, Bush brought it back, and Obama got rid of it again and now Trump, sounded by white men in suits has brought it back again. Trump’s cabinet has more white men in it than any first cabinet since Ronald Reagan in 1981, or Dennis Nilsen in 1983. Sorry. That’s unfair to Dennis Nilsen. He killed a lot less people than Trump will have done signing that order.

Trump has also signed an executive order to withdraw the Trans-Pacific Partnership deal or TPP which sounds like it’s for your bunghole. The TTP was a trade pact between 12 nations that covered 40% of the world’s economy and much like the TTIP that was proposed and would’ve included the UK, it’s actually quite a damaging policy that would’ve given corporations obscene amounts of power over governments and would contribute to lower wage work and rising inequality. It did have some good parts too, like universal labour and environmental standards, copyrights and patents, a bit like the EU, and signatories were required to join the United Nations Convention Against Corruption. So you have to wonder, did Trump sign it in order to protect workers and halt corporate power? Or was it because environmental standards and signing against corruption weren’t his bag? Well considering Trump’s also promised to lower corporation taxes to 15 or 20% from the current 35% and lift regulations by up to 75% it’s probably the second bit as it sounds like corporate power is definitely his bag. A bag that despite his rhetoric is very likely made in China.

It does look like he’ll be repealing Obamacare or the Affordable Care Act and replacing it with a Republican version which Sean Spicer backtracked on saying at the press briefing that everyone would be covered by it. This means insurance companies probably won’t be prohibited from discriminating against people with pre-existing conditions. It also looks like he’s backing away from repealing Obama’s executive orders on immigration. There were worries he’d undo the Deferred Action For Childhood Arrivals which would remove protection from deportation for hundreds of young people who arrived in the states as kids. I suppose the only downside is with healthcare going even more to shit, and corporations probably screwing workers at least if he had repealed the DACA then those kids would’ve at least got a free trip off a sinking ship.

And Trump is really buddying up with Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu agreeing to move the US embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem the city that both Israelis and Palestinians say is their capital. So you know, stamping down that the US think it’s Israel’s turf is sure to keep everything calm right? Why not just put the Turkish US embassy in Cyprus and combine several embassies to have just one Yugoslavian one slap bang in the middle of nine countries?

The Trump Organisation has presented a letter to CNN saying he’s resigning from every office and position he holds in over 400 companies and judging by the change in tone of recent tweets he’s allowed a staff member to take over his Twitter. Either that or he’s on a shit load of valium and autocorrect has become sentient and is trying to save humanity. He’s still to appoint a lot of administration positions and judging by the senate hearings last week, a number of those he’s already appointed are definitely not up to the job, including Rick Perry who was put forward for Energy Secretary and told the senate he had no idea it meant nuclear weapons which he has no clue about. So that makes two with him and Trump.

Trump has promised closer ties with the UK, though again like all Trump clothing, those ties are probably made in China. He’s meeting our Prime Minister Theresa May this Thursday which should be interesting as his inauguration speech said he’s all about ‘buy American, hire American’ so any trade deal with the UK won’t be that great for us, unless they want to keep borrowing Lloyd Grossman and John Barrowman. I’m pretty sure nothing interesting will get sorted anyway as Donald will tell Theresa lies that he’s just made up while she’ll tell him about plans she doesn’t have yet.

Oh and the Donald has declared the day of his inauguration as a ‘National Day Of Patriotic Devotion.’ Obama declared his as a ‘Day of Renewal and Reconcilliation’ and man monkey George W Bush declared his inauguration day a National Day Of Prayer and Thanksgiving’. But no, old Trumpy pants wants it to be a second birthday for himself and nationalistic tendancies. He may as well have declared it ‘Day For Racist Jokes and Having Sex With A Flag’.

So the first 100 days of Trump will be interesting as it’s the closest thing we’ll have to a Samuel Beckett- George Orwell collaboration. Homage to Krapp perhaps. Or waiting for 1984 people to attend my inaugauration. Fingers crossed that with all indications so far and the bullshit alternative facts stance that shows his administration will keep lying for self benefits, that hopefully it’s not just The Road to Endgame.

INTERVIEW PART 2:

Many thanks to Michael for talking to me. You can find him on Twitter @mrmmarsh and his bad pr website is at badpr.co.uk. The Good Thinking Society can also be found on Twitter @goodthinkingsoc or on their website at goodthinkingsociety.org. And as I’ve mentioned bazillions of times before on this show, Full Fact are @fullfact on Twitter and fullfact.org and always worth checking out. And as Michael said, do keep checking as many sources as possible and really do think before you just mindlessly retweet something that may not be true at all. Then hopefully you should all be able to handle the truth better than Tom Cruise fondling Jack Nicholson’s nether regions.

As always if you have someone you’d like me to interview or a subject you’d like me to interview someone about please drop me a line @parpolbro on Twitter, the ParPolBro group on Facebook or partlypoliticalbroadcast@gmail.com. I hope over the next few weeks to chat to some experts on the French elections, the Northern Irish ones, Russia, Gambia and more on the US too. So if you have any suggestions for any of those let me know. Or don’t let me know and I’ll just put on a terrible accent and interview myself and then wait for Michael Marshall to expose this show as nonsense. No wait, the first one is definitely better. Do let me know.

BREXIT FALLOUT

Ok! So exciting times as no longer does Brexit just mean Brexit, well it does, but that Brexit also, according to Prime Minister and Ghost Of Christmas Future Theresa May, it also means she doesn’t want a bad deal, she just wants a good deal.’ Phew! So that’s everything cleared up then right? Well ok I’m being unfair because May did actually state a bit more about what we were going to get from our Brexit, and by get I mean lose. Firstly we will be leaving the customs union which means you can’t bring back all that booze from your trip to Calais anymore unless you pay a ton of duty. However May has also said she wants to keep a soft border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland which can’t be done if we leave the customs union as there will be duty on all trade crossing the border. Unless she just means that the border is there, but it’s made of pillows and Trebor mints? Then she said we might maintain an ‘associate membership’ of the customs union but didn’t explain what that meant. I guess it’s probably a badge with our name spelled wrong and an occasional newsletter with early bird options for Toberlone at the Duty Free at Charles De Gaulle airport.

The Prime Minister says that the UK will become an Asian style tax haven if the EU don’t offer us a good deal but that would effect what tarrifs and trade deals with do get with the EU, whilst depriving the UK of tax funding from companies. Former European Commission UK official Jonathan Faull warned that the UK won’t be able to buy access to the single market once we leave it. May wants to leave it to stop free movement but if she wants access to it the only deals are becoming part of the European Economic Area which requires accepting free movement. May said no deal from Brussels was better than a bad deal, which shows that we’re no longer in the ‘have the cake and eat it’ stance as a country but more the ‘don’t even have the cake as it’s not my very favourite cake so I’ll just sit here and starve to death.’

The financial institution JP Morgan has warned that May’s threats are very dangerous for the UK and if we just fell back to World Trade Organisations, we’d lose business with European countries over night, costing the UK considerable jobs and finances. The UK’s ambassador to the EU, Sir Ivan Rogers, resigned a few weeks ago blaming muddled thinking amongst ministers and let’s face it, getting a job where you have to bang your head against walls to test their density would be less frustrating. Meanwhile a House Of Commons briefing paper suggests that 5000 EU Laws apply in the UK and reviewing, amending and or repealing them all could take decades. So it’s even more like ‘I’ll have what I think is a cake but I’m not sure and I’ll eat it just very slowly to the point where it’s gone off and will probably kill me.’

Meanwhile Jeremy Corbyn says he is going to impose a three line whip, which I think is like a cat o’nine tails, for the Labour party to vote in favour of triggering Article 50 but a number of Labour MPs, especially those from Remain areas, look set to defy it. Several other Labour MPs including Yvette Cooper and Chukka Ummana are now towing the ‘ban free movement altogether line’ because they obviously have a ton of those racist Labour mugs left that they want to sell off. Personally, and I don’t throw my personal opinion around that often on this show, but I think that as much as I wanted to remain in the EU, the UK have voted to leave whether I agree with it or not, and so we probably should, we should just make it the very best remain-like leave possible while removing laws that stop the government from bailing out the steel industry and repairing some of our exports. I’m baffled by criticism of Corbyn that says he needs to appeal to non-Labour voters, then when he does, they say he’s doing the wrong thing. What’s the guy to do? I don’t know but he should probably try shaving off the beard, wearing a hat and calling himself Ceremy Jorbyn and I reckon he’d have a least a week of everyone leaving him alone before they realised.

Brexit Minister David Davis has said the UK will quite the EU even if Parliament vote down the deal because he truly believes in British sovereignty obviously and so surely the best option is now for MPs to fight for a deal that doesn’t just leave us with our face in old, old mud cake having not eaten any of it while various European birds peck out our cake filled eyes? Either that or we all join the 130k people who’ve applied for an Irish passport since June last year. Anyone have grandparents who were born in Ireland and fancy adopting 16 million people? I mean that’s a lot of birthday cards to send out for an elderly couple sure, but think of all the visitors they’d get? Well assuming they’d be able to travel back to visit of course. God this is hard.

What are your thoughts? Have your opinions on Brexit changed or, well, remained, as time has passed? Drop me a line at the usual channels and any unusual ones that take your fancy. I like whale mail myself. That’s huge letters or postcards popped in the ocean, then harpooned illegally by a Japanese fisherman and eaten. Try it!

END

That’s all for this week’s Partly Political Broadcast. There was loads I couldn’t fit on this week’s show and so depending on the next week of news I’ll try on episode 45 to look at Labour’s new attempt at a populist stance that’s working so well no one seems to have noticed, the government’s attempts to sell off the Green Investment bank and Theresa May’s new plan to invest in science, research and innovation with her first step being to discover what any of those things are as she’s clearly not used any of them before now. I’m really keen though to find out more from you, the listeners, what I should be talking about. There’s so much to tackle each week that I’m concerned I’m repeating myself and certain themes quite a lot. You know what I mean? There’s so much to tackle each week that I’m concerned I’m repeating myself and certain themes quite a lot. Ha! Psyche! Seriously though, please do drop me a line @parpolbro on Twitter, the parpolbro Facebook group or partlypoliticalbroadcast@gmail.com if you have thoughts on subjects I’ve missed so far.

Also do give us a review on the iTunes, tell everyone you’ve ever known to listen in and shout me a dollar or two on the Patreon.com/parpolbro if you can. Have an great week or failing that have some weak gratings!

This week’s show was brought to you by letters sent by whale mail and the numbers 1 and a half million which when converted into reality is about 12 but they’re all quite big and move really fast,

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