Episode 73 – Boris Is Boris | Partly Political Broadcast

Episode 73 – Boris Is Boris

Released on Tuesday, September 19th, 2017.

Episode 73 – Boris Is Boris

Episode 73 – Tiernan chats natural disasters with Dave Powell (@powellds) from the Sustainababble podcast (@thebabblewagon). Plus a look at the German elections and unfortunately for everyone Boris is Boris.

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THIS EPISODE IS TAGGED WITH: • parpolbro, Partly Political Broadcast, Patreon, podcast, political, politics, satire, Sustainababble, Theresa May, Tiernan Douieb

Transcript

Episode 73

Hello and welcome to episode 73 of the Partly Political Broadcast. I’m Tiernan Douieb and like lovechild of Bagpuss and an old jar of lemon curd Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson I too have made a 10 step plan for a successful Brexit that I would like to unveil on this week’s show. So here it is:

FANFARE

Step 1: It’ll be great because you know things and er, stuff and oh look over there! A puppy! It’s got such a small face!

Step 2: Lalalalalalalalalala can’t hear you.

Step 3: Right, well, we’ll just take all the money that no one has and imagine someone has it somewhere else. Bloody hell it’s not hard.

Step 4: Brexit what Brexit? No idea what you’re talking about.

Step 5: Oh Brexit. Right. Well I wouldn’t worry about that.

Step 6: Sorry, I’ve got a call on the other line. Hang on a minute.

Step Twelvty: Brexit means you can make up numbers if you want. Here’s another Frithy Seinth.

Step 10: Clap your hands and say I believe in Brexit` at least 15 times a day. That should distract you from appallingly shit Brexit negotiations.

Step 725: The original Ghostbusters still exists even if you didn’t like the new one.

Feel better about it now? No? Bloody traitor.

Yes, like someone else’s floater during your bathtime, Boris Johnson decided he should wade back into the Brexit debate despite absolutely no one asking him to. Despite an attempted terrorist attack in Parsons Green earlier that day, BoJo and the Telegraph decided Friday night was the best time to print a veritable essay of 4000 words on his vision for a bold, thriving Britain enabled by Brexit. No one needs another vision from Boris a neoliberal flump who’s previous visions included a failed elitist garden bridge project that cost £37m before being scrapped, a failed island airport project in the Thames Estuary that would’ve polluted London loads, cost silly amounts and been harder to get to than Heathrow, and of course the Emirates air line cable car in the only part of London where there is fuck all to see on the ground let alone from the sky. And actually Boris’s essay and 10 step plan for a successful Brexit contain just as airy fairy nonsense ideas as his other ventures with step 7 of his plan being ‘Brexit Will Be A Success’. Yeah nice one. Why will Brexit be a success? Cos it’ll be a success stupid. With insights like that I’m amazed he’s not in charge of all negotiations. And while we’re at it, why not put 90’s reggae star Bitty McClean in charge of the Met Office as he’s fully able to explain to us that when it’s raining, it’s raining? Johnson, which is appropriately US slang for penis, also brought back that big lie that went around the UK on a bus fooling people into making life changing decisions? No I don’t mean the adverts for the Emoji Movie that promised it was an adventure beyond words which is definitely wrong because it could be summed up by a number of words. I mean the promise that by leaving the EU the UK gains back £350m a week that could be used for the NHS. Yes, the lie that was discredited by everyone including pro-Leave campaigners pretty much the morning after the referendum result and doesn’t take into account rebates or EU spending on the UK, or you know, any facts. You sort of wonder why they didn’t just go the whole hog, or rather unicorn and say that if we left the EU we’d get £70 bazillion pounds back plus every person in the UK would start shitting gold automatically.

The UK Statistics Authority has said they are disappointed that Boris used the £350m figure again but I mean really, expecting Boris to take any notice of a criticism from the UK Stats Authority is like expecting a returning character’s important advice to have any effect on a naïve teenage virgin in a horror movie sequel. Despite many suggesting Boris’s article is another bid from him to become Prime Minister, he insisted he is all behind Theresa May. Without commenting on how I agree that he is all behind, it’s more likely he made that statement because that’s his favourite position to be in for stabbing people.

In other, actually more important news, there was an attempted terrorist attack at Parsons Green in London where an explosive on a tube train prematurely went off early injuring several people and more during the evacuation of the station. US President and prolapse with a loudhailer Donald Trump was quick to his Twitter to exclaim it was the work of a loser terrorist who was in the sights of Scotland Yard before adding that the internet is their main recruitment tool so must be cut off. Wait till he finds out how Monster.co.uk use, it’ll blow his mind. Arrests have already been made of a man suspected to have planted the bomb and the terror level was briefly risen to critical then back to severe in the same day due to the arrests and on account of if we’re to be afraid of young men using the internet to explode prematurely then we’ll have no time to do anything else.

President Of The European Commission and parallel universe old John Oliver Jean Claude Juncker has said that Britain will regret leaving the EU, forgetting that as Brits we don’t openly regret anything which is part of the reason this is all happening. Juncker commented that the EU will move on, so we can expect a rebound session where it starts having relations with other countries briefly before being comfortable being itself, none of which it will regret either as it’s Europe and they’re more sensible about that sort of thing. UK Prime Minister and exactly what Phillip K Dick has been warning us about for years Theresa May will be making a speech to the EU in Florence on the 22nd. An ideal location for someone who’s vanities really need a severe bonfiring. Meanwhile former Chancellor and exactly what the TV series V has been warning us about for years George Osborne got into trouble after telling Esquire, a magazine for men who snort substance rather than have any, that he will not rest until Theresa May ‘is chopped up in bags in freezer.’ Which is a ridiculous thing to say as you can’t chop a robot, you have to dismantle it. Shadow Secretary for State of Health and politics version of the One Show, in that every time she’s on TV you feel patronised, Dianne Abbott got in trouble for saying the N word on the Good Morning Britain television show after using it as an example of the abuse she gets online, prompting many to abuse her online about it because apparently two wrongs make a tweet. Many were angry that she had said such offensive language on television at a time children might be watching which is odd as I can’t think of anything more offensive that starting your day watching a show co-hosted by professional clegnut Piers Morgan. Or ending your day like that. Or middling it. Or…you get my point.

The Grenfell Inquiry started last week with Martin Moore-Bick a man who sounds constantly in demand of biros, saying he would not be appointing anyone from the Grenfell community, as it would risk undermining impartiality. I assume he’ll also be ignoring accounts from the fire brigade too then, and on the other side everyone in Kensington & Chelsea council too then and only collating vox pops from the cast of Goggle Box after they’d seen it on the news. As we head into Conference season Liberal Democrat leader and best remembered for playing Vizzini in Princess Bride, Vince Cable has said that he could be Prime Minister. I guess that’s in the same way I could to, or you could, you know, if everyone else in the world died.

And lastly former White House Press Secretary and frightened chipolata Sean Spicer made an appearance at the Emmy awards in the US, prompting much anger that it was normalizing his role that included outright lying and belittling the Holocaust. I’m pretty his appearance made Trump happy though as in amongst awards being handed out to amazing people of colour such as Donald Glover or Riz Ahmed who’ve worked stupidly hard and being deservedly rewarded for it, most attention somehow went to a white guy who told fibs and is mostly known for being shit at his job. If that’s not an analogy for America today, I don’t know what is.

Hello you! How are you? Really? Oh dear. Maybe try trepanning? I’ve heard that helps. Anyway, thanks again for listening to the show and hello to the new listeners that joined as of last week thanks to ParPolBro being in the iTunes New and Noteworthy section again. The show’s not new so I’m hoping that means it’s noteworthy. I guess there is every chance it’s just and. Sigh. If you are new, and you have time, do check out older episodes for the interviews which are all still relevant and my material which definitely isn’t. They are all still available on Acast or iTunes or Pocket Casts or you mind if you think harder enough. No, think harder. There you go. And as I mentioned last week I am working on a website with proper info on each episode on too. Hopefully that will come along soonish. Until then I will pop all notes and links mentioned onto the Twitter and Facebook and mega thanks again to Kat Day for doing the linear notes for last week’s show which is very helpful indeed.

Thanks also to Sean for donating to the Patreon last week, which means he can now access an mp3 of my EdFringe show which I’m only going to leave on there till the end of the month so if you fancy that perk, head to patreon.com/parpolbro or if you just want to send me money with no reward like a Samaritan of the podworld, head to ko-fi.com/parpolbro and buy me a coffee. Not really obvs as sending it through the post would be tricky and I’m not sure my postman would be remotely happy, though considering what time of day I’d usually get post it’ll be fairly cold by then anyway. But if you can donate, it does all help and I have used some of your donations to get my ticket to the Labour conference next week for a day, and I’ll be trying to get some recordings there if I can. Some people have asked why I’m not going to the Conservative conference. That is because it’s tons more expensive and I can’t afford and also because either I need a press pass or I’d have to become a Tory Party member which I think would be funny for 5 minutes then despairing for every second after. And I’m not going to the Lib Dems one for the same reason no one likes going to a comedy show if they’re the only people in the audience. Of course, if you can’t afford to donate please please do give the show a review on iTunes or Stitcher or tattooed on your leg. And yes I ask for this every week and yes it’s boring but until I get every possible review by every human being on the planet, yes ISS crew, you are exempt even though I know you have great wi-fi, then I will keep asking as it really does help get more listeners along.

That is it for admin this week. If you are one of the handful of people who listens to this in Ireland or one of the several people that listen to this in Northern Ireland and want to abuse the current lack of border, I’m in Dublin at the Dublin Fringe on Friday and Saturday with kids shows and at Anseo on Friday night with Bec Hill doing our solo shows if you fancy coming along to that. Then Cork at the Cork Fringe on Sunday with much the same stuff. So that should all be fun. But it does mean that next week’s show may be a truncated one, as I’m not flying back to the UK till the Monday aka the day I do this thing. I have got an interview booked in so there’ll at least be that though.

On this week’s show I am talking to Dave Powell from the excellent podcast Sustainababble all about natural disasters – no not my comedy career, the other type – and also a little look at Germany before their upcoming Bundestag elections. Oh and of course, there’s more Brexit because it never ever ends. Sorry I mean, it will be a success because it will be a success. But before all that get your bib on cos we’re tucking into this:

Headlines:

The Inquiry into the Grenfell Tower fire started last week and Grenfell survivors are already concerned that they have not been listened to. This may be because Chairman of the Inquiry Martin Moore Bick, a former Lord Justice of the Court Of Appeal, opened the enquiry by saying that it would provide answers to how the disaster happened, and that he would not shrink away from making recommendations that could lead to prosecutions. And by this point you’re probably thinking, Tiernan this sounds pretty good what are you on about? Yeah but then he went on to say that he wouldn’t be appointing any survivors of the fire to the panel as it would risk impartiality. Hmm. Now I understand how that works in any of those cop shows where the cop who’s pal has been murdered gets taken off the case because they’re too close man, too close. But in this case the survivors are people who’ve been trying to highlight concerns about the tower for many years, have been dealing with a neglectful council and were, upsettingly for them, there when it happened and therefore you think having someone who’s been through all that on the panel would provide reassurance and support to those giving evidence as well as give a view from the residents who will undoubtedly have a different and more important opinion than, say, those who commissioned the fire risk cladding be attached in order to save money. Or in the case of Martin Moore Bick, a judge who in 2014 ruled that Westminster council could rehouse a tenant 50 miles away, a ruled that was then overturned by the Supreme Court. Thankfully as sending anyone to Milton Keynes is the sort of thing that would be a human rights abuse in other countries. HOW CAN ONE PLACE HAVE SO MANY ROUNDABOUTS? Sorry. A group of lawyers that represent victims and survivors of the fire and call themselves BMELawyers4Grenfell have expressed how concerned they are with a lack of diversity in the inquiry team, who are so far, all white and not from the area, which doesn’t represent the community around Grenfell at all. It’d be like having Richard Branson chair an inquiry over people who need public healthcare and fucking hate hot air balloons. The final panel is yet to be announced but considering there is a high chance the Grenfell Tower fire would’ve been avoided if concerns of residents had been listened to in the first place the inquiry panel should really look at themselves first when investigating possibilities of wilful neglect. I’ve mentioned them on the show before but do check out Inquest who are providing support and campaigning for a proper inquiry for the Grenfell Tower community. They can be found at inquest.org.uk and @inquest_org on twitter. Also bmelawyers4grenfell are at bmelawyers4grenfell.wordpress.com and @bmelaw4grenfell on Twitter. Do support them both.

Home Secretary and cross between Super Nanny and Darth Vader Amber Rudd was accused of contempt of court. No this isn’t just because I’m sure she likes to march around shouting ‘I AM THE LAW’. Instead this is to do with Sammin Bigzad, a 22 year old asylum seeker living and caring for his father in Ramsgate, Kent until he was flown back to Afghanistan despite a high court injunction forbidding that because it would put his life in danger. Because that’s how much Amber Rudd wants to make sure there’s British jobs for British workers, she gives extra work to airlines even when it’s illegal to do so.

The Taliban had threatened Sammin’s life after he worked for a construction company with Afghan and American contracts, and so he fled to the UK where people only get angry with construction workers because YOU CAN’T JUST TAKE A TEA BREAK WHEN I’M STUCK IN TRAFFIC BECAUSE OF YOUR ROAD WORKS. I CAN SEE YOU YOU KNOW, I CAN! Sorry. Ahem.

The Home Office however ignored an order made by the high court not to send him back to Kabul and did exactly that. While in Kabul he had to hide in his room as men with guns arrived at his hotel to look for him. Two more high court judges made orders to bring him back to the UK and the Home Office tried to have those orders set aside. Sammin finally returned to the UK on Sunday night at the end of an in out in out terrifying version of the hokey cokey. And so luckily Sammin is now safe and the High Court have commenced court proceedings against the Home Office. The Home Office have refused to comment on an ongoing case, which I guess means they might be trying to book themselves flights they shouldn’t be on asap.

HURRICANES

If you only ever watch Hollywood films, you’d be forgiven for assuming that natural disasters are an excessive and exhausting way to find the love of your life or rebuild your estranged relationship with your father. However in reality, they aren’t particular useful for either of these things and instead seem more effective as nature’s way of telling a bunch of people they need a swimming pool in their homes, if you still have one after the hurricane, earthquake, tsunami or swam of locusts is done with you. In recent weeks the US and Caribbean have been subject to Hurricane Harvey and Hurricane Irma both of which sound like accomplished snooker players or DJs for the Beastie Boys, but sadly were devastatingly powerful winds that have devastated the Mexican Gulf, various Caribbean islands, the Florida Keys and in the case of Harvey, flooded Texas. Many residents have been displaced and made homeless, and in the case of Harvey, caused mass leaking of hazardous materials into residential areas. Which again if you’ve watched enough Hollywood films might suggest that Ninja Turtles will be created saving everyone but again sadly, in reality it just means a lot of people are at risk. These are huge political issues because of politics effect on climate change and generally, like with Hurricane Katrina and Wilma in 2005, the main people that are affected are the poor and marginalised.

Despite evidence pointing directly at all of this being the result of climate change, there’s still very little reporting in the media that it’s the cause. There are indications this week that Donald Trump may keep the US in the Paris Agreement but we can’t be certain he will or if it’ll make any difference if he can barely control his own endless gas emissions. With temperatures and sea levels rising, Artic ice melting and Hurricane Maria looking set to cause further devastation to countries on the North Atlantic West coast I thought this week we could do with some knowledge on what is happening, why it affects who it does and whether or not the smartest thing to do would be to brush up on swimming skills and rebuild relationships with estranged relatives in advance so it saves you time later. So I spoke to Dave Powell from the excellent environmental podcast Sustainabbable. Dave is the Environment Lead at the New Economics Foundation and long time listeners may remember from all the way back to Episode 10 last year when I spoke to him about the then budget’s effects on the then environment. Well, spoilers, not enough has happened since then. So I thought it best to get Dave back and give us a wee update on all things natural and disastery.

Here’s Dave:

INTERVIEW WITH DAVE PART 1:

We’ll be back with Dave in a minute but first:

GLOBAL BROADCAST

I know you listeners. You’re out there listening along thinking but Tiernan, with conference season coming up in the UK there simply isn’t any politics news happening. Well fear not ParPollers, it turns out stuff sometimes happens in other countries too. WHA WHAT? I know right? And this week in particular there are important happenings in that over there Germany. So join me on my audio plane as we get a shitty Ryanair sound flight to check out political happenings in the elsewhere.

RYANAIR FLIGHT NOISE

Wow, that was just audio and yet still so uncomfortable and irritating. Still, you get what you pay for. First to Germany, home of the wurst and the best of Europe. See what I did there? See, my C in German GCSE was totally worth it. Sehr gut in fact. Ok, I’ll stop. Germany’s Federal election is on September 24th where German citizens will vote to elect members of the Bundestag, the sort of equivalent of the House Of Commons, except with a better name that makes it sound like a big lads weekend. Alright lads, ready for the Bundestag? And that sentence I’ve said right there, is exactly why so many European countries hate the Brits. Anyway these elections are done with mixed-member proportional representation which is part first past the post, part proportional representation yet somehow neither and altogether baffling for someone like me who’s from a country where people get baffled putting a x cross in one box. But all in all, it looks like the Christian Democratic Union, Angela Merkel’s party are still in a very comfortable lead at 36% support, with the Social Democractic Party lead by Martin Schulz at 22%. So all in all, it doesn’t appear much to report and seems like Merkal will once again be chancellor of Germany. Except looking lower down the numbers and there are some frightening changes to Germany’s outlook. For a start in third place, below those two parties at 11% is the AfD or Alternative For Germany, an anti-immigration far right party. Yeah, you make up your own easy jokes about how you’d think that of all the countries in the world Deutchsland might’ve learned not to do this again.

AfD were originally set up to oppose Europe bailing out indepted EU members like Greece and you can already tell they’re a lovely bunch if their reason for forming is to not help people. They already feel like the political equivalent of a troll account. Since that fun phase they’ve morphed and evolved into wanting to be even less helpful and reject all of Merkel’s policies helping refugees, and wants to reject any asylum seekers who applications are rejected regardless if sending them home would put them in danger or not. I can’t work out if they’re just nasty or self harmers who are too meek to hurt themselves but do believe in karma. They want to close all EU borders, deport all foreign born criminals of the age of 12 upwards and set up camps for migrants. Yep. Really. I mean. Yep. They supposedly have a far right and more moderate wing of the party, but the relationship between the two sides is for the far right to say something awful like representative 76 year old Alexander Gauland saying Germany should be proud of its soldiers in both world wars, then the moderate side represented by 38 year old Alice Weidal will say that she disagrees with his choice of words but agrees with the sentiment. It’s like a fascism normalisation machine. You may as well put Nazi slogans into google translate back and forth until they sound like a newsreader is saying them. And here’s where it gets worrying as they are garnering support from all the mainstream parties who each have disillusioned supporters. Left wing voters want more workers rights, right wing voters want less immigration and neither find those things with the CDU or SPD and so are turning to populists instead. This all sounding familiar? Well if it doesn’t, then bear in mind that constipated hate newt Nigel Farage, known for passing between arseholes like the game piece in fart tennis, went to visit the Afd and announce his support for them last week which is odd because I thought he was very against European unions. Though Farage did mainly appear to complain that Brexit wasn’t being mentioned enough in the German election because again he’s obviously changed his mind about politicians from other countries meddling in elections they have nothing to do with. If life was a TV script he’d definitely have been killed off by now due to complaints from viewers.

So the issue is, with the part proportional representation type of election the AfD could gain seats in the Bundestag for the first time, which would mean they could have influence over policies. And a bigger worry is that even though Merkel is looking set to win this time, it’s very likely going to be the last time she runs as Chancellor, meaning unless an obvious contender arises, there could well be a power vacuum in Germany in 4 years time. And much like when you’re doing the hoovering, horrible creepy crawlies get sucked into a power vacuum. Not to look at Germany’s history too much, as us Brits are wont to do every bloody football match and more, but there was a power vacuum in Germany in 1933 too….

But But But it’s not all doom and gloom. Because just beneath AfD in the polls are the Left Party at 10%, the Free Democrats a very business friendly party at 9% and then the Greens at 8%. And more importantly, proving very popular with young people are a party called Die Partei, or The Party, which sounds less like a threat to other politicians to our English ears. They were set up by editors of a satirical magazine and started getting attention in 2014 when one of their members was elected to the EU parliament. They have some very fun silly policies such as tackling the gender pay gap by paying all managers according to their bra size. They took over various defenct AfD facebook pages to show how they’d used bots to reach voters and changed their page names from things like Love Of The Homeland to Love Of Hummus, demanding that users of the group follow their strict rules such as ‘all criticism of Muslims must be directed towards mecca’. While Die Partei are not expected to reach the 5% of the vote needed to get seats in the Bundestag, they do have over 25000 members, which is just under the 26000 membership of AfD. Considering they are appealing to younger voters too, there’s every chance that by 4 years time, if they keep going, they should hit that 5% as those younger people can finally vote. And as Die Partei candidate Nico Semsrott says ‘The AfD is built on hate, and we are not. Hate and laughter are the exact opposite. We are the serious populists, the good ones.’ And if that isn’t promising, I don’t know what is. Saying that I don’t agree that hate and laughter are the exact opposite. I mean if we all laugh at hateful hateful Nigel Farage, isn’t that the best of both?

I’ll report back on the results in a couple of weeks time. Viel Glück Deutschland!

And now back to Dave:

INTERVIEW WITH DAVE POWELL – Part 2

Thanks to Dave for having that fascinating if occasionally terrifying chat with me. That is the problem with any interview about climate change is that afterwards you generally sort of panic about how awful it all is and how difficult it all is to handle, then generally spend the rest of your day eating dinner with a horrible feeling of ominousness over you. But here is why it’s important to swot up on it, put pressure on your MPs and people who can do something about it and generally stand up for people like me who really aren’t great at swimming. If you would like to hear more Dave – and why wouldn’t you? – do check out his excellent podcast with Olly Hayes called Sustainababble. They’ve just come back from their summer break and the first ep back is a fascinating interview with documentarian and explorer Bruce Parry who did that excellent Beeb show Tribe a few years ago. Do check it out. Sustainababble can be found on iTunes, Stitcher and all that and also on Twitter @thebabblewagon and Dave’s personal Twitter is @powellds. Also the people he recommends following are Bill McKbben who is on Twitter @billmckibben and non-director Michael Mann who is @michaelemann.

As I say every bloomin’ show if you have someone you’d like me to interview or something you’d like me to interview people about, please do let me know. And thanks to both Leo and Emma for sending excellent suggestions that I am looking into. If you have excellent suggestions too, or even just ok ones, let me know @parpolbro on twitter, the Partly Political Broadcast group on Facebook or partlypoliticalbroadcast@gmail.com. Or put it in a 10 point plan and release it in a major paper while something more important is happening and I’ll probably read it as a welcome distraction at being angry with something else instead. Again, email is always easiest.

BREXIT

While writing this week’s show, it was reported that Oliver Robbins, the top Brexit official at the Department For Exiting The European Union, had left. Yes the man in charge of leaving leaves, leaving leavers with a lack of, er, leavership probably. Who’d have expected so many leaves in Autumn eh? Ok, I’ll stop now. Robbins has instead gone to a job at Number 10, more directly working for Theresa May, so it’s not as if he’s escaped the dark side and turned over a new leave. But rumours are that he did escape the DExEU because of tension between him and mouldy prawn cracker David Davis. Which makes sense as Davies seems like the sort of man that could make the Dalai Lama need a stress ball. Robbins follows the departure of several other important figures in the Brexit department including Lord Bridges who left after the June election and has recently stated that the UK must be honest about the complexity of the scale of leaving the EU. So I’m sure he was super pleased to see Boris explain it’ll all be ok because it’ll all be ok. Though to be fair the only complexity of scale Boris understands is when he’s trying to find the correct foundation for his lizard skin. So here’s the thing with Robbins leaving, and the others, is what state does that mean the DExEU is in now, is there anyone left who actually knows what they’re doing? And this is also an indication of rats leaving a rapidly sinking process? Have we been assuming this charge towards a hard Brexit and crappy bravado at the EU was idiotic waving when in fact it was drowning?

It would mean that you could look at Boris’s article on Friday as perhaps an attempt to get fired before several gallons of shit hit the industrial fan. Why else would you bring back the £350m figure? And lets quickly get this straight. In 2016 the UK paid the £13.1bn to the EU budget as agreed. EU spending on the UK was £4.5bn. So that leaves us at £8.6bn. There’s also about £1bn that we give the EU for the private sector that go directly into research budgets that often benefit UK based companies. So after all that the UK gives the EU around £120m a week, or £17m a day, or per person, 26p a day which is about the same price as a penny sweet will be once we leave due to crazy inflation and unaffordable exports. Of course we could all give that 26p each to the NHS but it’s not up to us and chances are there’ll be other areas of infrastructure that will now need help without EU funding, you know, like all of South Wales. Other choice bits of shit in amongst the shitcorn in his article included allaying concerns about car manufacturing in the UK by saying ‘traditional car companies will vanish within 20 years’ due to automated cars. Yeah, that’s reassuring. Don’t worry everyone, Brexit might lose you your jobs, but robots would’ve stolen them anyway. Idiot.

Boris has now backtracked from some of his statement and seems to be suggesting that the UK will accept the MFF fee or Multiannual Financial Framework which are all the projects we were involved in contractually till 2020, which makes sense because as I’ve mentioned before, it won’t look great for other deals if we make a big point about how we break contracts.
Theresa May has now commented on Boris’s article by saying Boris is Boris, which I guess much like Brexit is Brexit means no one understands what he is, but ploughs on despite mass unease. May has also assured the press that the UK Brexit position is being driven from the front. More bullshit talk but considering the government are relentlessly arse about face with it all, who knowsn which bit is front. What we do know is that in his State Of The Union address EU President Jean Claude Juncker announced a new reform package for the EU with a push for all applicable member states to join the euro, and the Schengen area to expand to Romania and Bulgaria, both of which are the sorts of announcements that pre-Brexit would’ve caused UKIP to spontaneously combust and to be fair, quite a few moderates to feel uneasy too. But it’s also part and parcel of EU growth beating the US for the last two years, unemployment at a nine year low and eight million jobs being created since Juncker became president. Juncker made a point of saying the EU will move on from Brexit as it’s not the future of Europe and I can’t help but feeling this was all the verbal equivalent of when you see pictures of an ex on Facebook on an amazing holiday due to their new high paid job and rich lover which you’re looking at while sitting in your pants eating beans on toast and applying for jobs.

This week’s idiot Brexit comment came from Andrea Leadsom, leader of the house of commons, and mother. She said in a talk at the Institute of Government that ‘in leaving EU, we will control our own money, own laws, own borders and as the PM said we will be a global leader in free trade.’ Of course, the issue with that is I’m pretty sure we controlled all that already Andrea. What next? She’ll point out that post Brexit we can have our own Queen and Broadcasting Corporation? Idiot.

END

And that is all for this week’s show. Yes no Partly Big Question again, sorry, it will return soon, promise. But not next week. Maybe the one after. Maybe the question should be, when should it return? Answers on a postcard please, then send me a picture of what you’ve written, then eat the postcard. Sorry, I have no idea what I’m on about. Thank you for listening to this show, and if you do enjoy, please do spread the word like margarine and if you can donate to the show at patreon.com/parpolbro or ko-fi.com/parpolbro please do, if you can’t please at least give it a review on your favourite podcast outlet or jam merchants.

Thanks as always to Acast for hosting the show and to my brother The Last Skeptik who’s new album is out end of September and is called This Is Where It Gets Good, featuring guests such as the amazing Kojey Radical and you can pre-order that now and he has a podcast called Thanks For Trying which the next ep will be with Doc Brown and Chabuddy G, so do check that out.

I’ll be back next week with possibly a slightly shorter show but nonetheless one that will no doubt have a look at the Lib Dem conference and whether they had enough people there to play a 5 a side or if Nick Clegg and Tim Farron just took it in turns taking own goals.

BYE

This week’s show was brought to you by the number 350m which is both the amount of years ago the Carboniferous age was when spineless creatures wriggled the Earth before evolving or becoming extinct, and it’s also the amount of pounds referenced in a dangerous lie that won’t go in extinct despite being only ever mentioned by a spineless creature.

Episode 73 – Boris Is Boris

Released on Tuesday, September 19th, 2017.

Episode 73 – Boris Is Boris

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