Episode 92 – When In Rome

Released on Tuesday, February 27th, 2018.

Episode 92 – When In Rome

Episode 92 – It’s the Italian elections so Tiernan (@tiernandouieb) speaks to Italy Correspondent for The Economist John Hooper (@john_hooper) about how it all works. Plus Labour finally has some Brexit policy, sort of, kinda, and a folk song about MP Ben Bradley with backing music that doesn’t work with it at all.

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Further Reading

Partly Political Broadcast episode 91, 27th February 2018

When in Rome

http://www.tiernandouieb.co.uk/podcast/

Linear liner notes

It’s the Italian elections so Tiernan (@tiernandouieb) speaks to Italy Correspondent for The Economist John Hooper (@john_hooper) about how it all works. Plus Labour finally has some Brexit policy, sort of, kinda, and a folk song about MP Ben Bradley with backing music that doesn’t work with it at all.

Links and sources of info from John Hooper’s interview:

All the usual ParPolBro stuff:


Transcript

Episode 92

INTRO

Hello and welcome to episode 92 of the Partly Political Broadcast, a podcast that digests the past week’s politics, then has to apologise to everyone it sees because the news keeps repeating itself. I’m Tiernan Douieb and if as badly whisked egg whites David Davis says Brexit will not plunge Britain into a Mad Max dystopia, how comes it’s making everyone on both sides Furiosa and Furiosa?

Phew eh? I mean what more reassuring statement do we all need than for the Brexit Secretary to insist things won’t be as bad as a horrific sci-scenario no one sad it would be as bad as. Of course it won’t be like the film Mad Max, mainly because post Brexit fuel will be even more expensive and all the silver paint we have won’t have to meet EU health and safety standards so if you spray it on your face you’ll die. If however Davis meant the original Mad Max then he’s wrong as Brexit is already a bit like that as a lot of people went full on Mel Gibson straight after the referendum. But despite now suddenly having to worry the economy and rise of Immortan Joe, Davis used his Road to Brexit speech to reassure everyone that the UK wants to lead a global race to the top which is tough when you live on a planet that’s constantly spinning. A Brext deal by the end of this year is apparently on the cards, though we still aren’t entirely sure who’s holding them especially as the government’s hand is entirely useless jokers.

The cabinet met at the Prime Minister’s country house last week and all we got was a lousy plan, where they basically the UK will stick with EU standards and rules but you know, our own way. Brilliant, it took 20 months for that. I don’t know why the day after the referendum they didn’t just say ‘we’ve made a decision and everything will be the same except from now on we call croissants bread turds and anyone kissing on both cheeks will be giving a stern telling off.’ Though even though it seems like they got bored of not having any ideas and just gave up, as Prime Minister and somehow haunted ghost – no I don’t know how she does that either but she does – Theresa May apparently played a blinder. And no sources wasn’t referring to the ablest games the Conservatives play behind closed doors, but more that she’d managed to persuade Brexiteers to shift their position which I think was arse first so now everything might just be tits up.

Never fear though because slowly cantering forth from the distance, its Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn aka Steve Zissou and the Life Erratic, and he brings with him a party policy of being in a permanent customs union, though not the customs union. Hooray an actual decision about where the opposition stand on Brexit even if it’s actually more of a sit down but raising your hand to make a point after they’ve stopped taking questions. But as they say, better late than never, a phrase that applies to everything except nuclear war or, well, Brexit, and it’s already ruffled vulture feathers as the Conservatives accused Corbyn of playing politics with the country’s future. An odd comment considering Corbyn is a politician making a political statement about a political happening. If anyone’s playing a game it’s the party who could only make a decision at Chequers.

Corbyn has also launched a tirade on the right wing press after they lied about him knowingly meeting with a Czech spy 30 years ago, because how does anyone know if they’ve met a spy? Isn’t the whole thing with spies that no one would ever know? No? Hmm. Corbyn said that The Sun, The Mail, The Telegraph and The Express had gone a bit James Bond in the last few days, which isn’t true as they’ve been unrealistic, misogynistic, and generally up for attacking foreigners for ages. Corbyn told those papers that a change is going to come, by which he meant press regulation but I reckon the internet, the fact most people treat newspapers like engraved tablets now and the need to save trees will probably do it first. Ben Bradley aka Evil Al Murray was one of three Conservative MPs who chose to believe the tabloids story about Jezza because yes, that does happen, even though everyone knows big letters on red are usually a warning sign. Bradley tweeted that Corbyn sold British secrets to Communist spies, causing the Labour leaders lawyers to demand Bradley made a full apology and ask followers to retweet it. I personally would’ve preferred him to apologise in autotune to a shit beat, release it and then donate all the proceeds to charity. But Ben’s tweet is now on 49,000 RTs meaning it’s the most popular Conservative tweet ever. Yes the only time anyone likes what they do is when they obey the opposition and apologise. I hope their PR team will acknowledge this boost for their brand and they’ll spend the next few years becoming big time online by apologising for everything before losing the next election for some FavStar level shizz.

Meanwhile in the US President and what it would look like if there was a Japanese Mascot for haemorrhoids Donald Trump has decided that the best way to keep schools safe is to give teachers guns, which he would give them bonuses for doing. Trump has made huge cuts to education over the past year and teachers don’t get a bonus for teaching, so to give them one for carrying a weapon is weird, though I suppose kids would behave a lot better in class. I think it’s a stupid idea except for PE teachers as maybe if they fired a gun, any attackers would just think a race had started and run off before anyone got hurt.

And lastly, grime artist Stormzy used his appearance at the Brit Awards to call out Theresa May’s lack of response to Grenfell and doing that got pushed a petition to put more public trust into the inquiry to over 150,000 signatures meaning Downing Street gave a response and it now has to be discussed in Parliament. I think that’s amazing and now we know how well that worked to actually get some sort of answer from May I think we should all learn from it, and maybe if Michael Barnier wants to turn up to the next Brexit negotiations topless in the rain and rapping about what the UK government’s plan for the Irish Border is, we might have it sorted in days.

Oh and the UK has been hit by very cold weather and snow, due to winds sweeping in from Russia. Gaping face wound Nigel Farage will no doubt any minute start telling everyone it’s exactly what Britain needs.

ADMIN

Howdy podchamps! Brrr I’m not saying it’s cold but I’ve only been outside briefly today and it made the inside of my nose so frozen that if I sneezed I would probably have killed a child. This is of course ideal weather for me and my wife as our baby is due next Friday and could really come at any point before then so I’m sure it’ll be really easy to just get my wife to the hospital by sled. I’ve been watching the winter Olympics, how hard can it be? Hopefully you are all toasty warm, which going by my toaster means some of you are very charred and or on fire, or if you’re a bagel, freezing. I have a really shit toaster. Anyway, thank you for listening and it seems last week’s jingle telling you all to review the show, donate to the Patreon and ko-fi and generally tell others about it went down well. By well I mean thank you to RealToms for the very nice one review and to Yohs-Kae for the Patreon donation, though I believe his is largely because I mis-pronounced his name twice on last week’s show. And probably thrice now. I am rubbish. But look, if you’d like me to mis-pronounce your name on this show, in return for a regular Patreon donation, I will do that for you whether you be a Steve or a Susan. But what I mean is, after the positive response to the jingle, here is a remix to keep things fresh for ya and save me from repeating all the stuff I just repeated to point out what was in the jingle you’ll now hear. With skills like that I really should be an MP:

DONATE JINGLE – REMIX?

Not much else to say this week, though if you are a London person or have heard or London or read about it in a book or seen it in a film, a brand new comedy club I’m helping to program opens this Friday with some very lovely line-ups. And yes I would say that, I booked them. You can find out all about that at londonslivecomedy.com and there’s loads of excellent curated nights coming up from people like Sara Pascoe, Elf Lyons, Amy Howerska and more so check those out if you like laughing. If you don’t like laughing, may I recommend the news or Twitter? You’re welcome. Oh and I always forget to plug this but if you want to hear about gigs I’m doing then sign up to my mailing list at tiernandouieb.co.uk as I’ll be sending the March one out later this week. Though it will mostly be me saying I’m not doing anything because I’m waiting to herald the arrival of Tiny Douieb, after which I’ll list their gigs too. But if you’d like an email that essentially has no useful content and collapses into your inbox once a month full of badly constructed sentences and self indulgent wittering, then go and sign up. Oh and the other thing I forgot to do last year, the British podcast awards open their listener’s award voting on March 1st. Now there is no chance this show will win because you need bazillions of listeners who are also willing to type in a thing online, but if you feel like giving this show a shout out anyway just so it’s not forgotten under the 6m plugs for Adam Buxton or something where people get murdered, then head to britishpodcastawards.com from Thursday and give us a little vote eh? It’s like general elections where ultimately ParPolBro won’t lead the country but think of it as a small noticeable protest vote. With any luck it’ll go all Brexit and I’ll win, much to the upset of many, consequently ruining podcasting forever.

On this week’s show there is a brief interview with Italian Correspondent for the Economist John Hooper all about the elections next weekend. It was meant to be longer but Rome has been hit with snow too and it’s genuinely baffled the shit out of them. Everything’s stopped working meaning John had to leave to get to his appointments earlier than planned. Damn these Russian snowflakes tampering with everything! So I’ve tried to fill in a few gaps on Italian politics after that, plus Brexit hellscape, and the reason I spent far too long looking for folk music loops and missed Corbyn’s speech and found one that still doesn’t really work and sounds shit but did it anyway. Yes, you’re welcome. But of course, first, there’s this:

HEADLINES

Universities. No not places where mythical horned horses do poetry about hot beverages, but instead institutes of higher education of the sort of place where they’d hugely mark down my intro statement to this because it didn’t address the issue, was highly irrelevant and mostly, was shit. But universities are hugely important hubs without which many young people would not be able to study and train to an academic level which is super useful if only to be able to feel like your anger frustration is justified when you still can’t get a job after graduating. If you are a student or work in a university or watch the news or have just made an amazing guess like some sort of modern day Nostradamus then you’ll know that last week university lecturers from over 60 universities went on strike beginning a 14 day protest that will result in about 600,000 teaching hours lost. So according to Malcolm Gladwell, that’s 60 people who will lose out on world class professionals, if somehow those 60 people were being taught by all those lecturers. No it doesn’t work. Yes I’ll not use that bit again. The reason the lecturers are on strike is because of proposed cuts to their pension scheme which could see some of them losing anywhere between £60k and £200k over their years of retirement. This would happen because their pension scheme is being shifted from one where it’s dependent on your final salary to one where it’s dependent on how their pension funds have performed on the stock market. Yes, you teach thousands of students, work hard all your life bestowing wisdom and for all you know you’ll get a shitty pension because some dick in Wall Street snorted too much coke and felt sad that day. Great stuff.

University lecturers have already suffered real pay cuts over the last few years, plus many are on casual contracts too so there’s not a lot to entice you to the job, apart from you know, inspiring the future generation and wearing an awesome Harry Potter type gown once a year. But while university spend on lecturers has fallen, pay for university vice-chancellors is huge bananas with most getting six times what lecturers would get and I don’t even know what a vice chancellor does. It’s the person in charge of wicked behaviour right? No? Then how do you explain a salary of £246k a year? That’s gotta be for dealing with some naughty stuff. According to the national student survey, there’s no correlation between how much a university pays it’s vice chancellor and how satisfied students are with their experience. So you can see why lecturers are peeved to the max and with Brexit looming too, over 2000 EU university staff have left UK universities all of which means less foreign students want to come over because there are now less top class experts teaching which means universities get less money which means lecturers get even more cuts and ultimately it feels like the sort of hell spiral Dante might put somewhere in an online zine of extras. The Office For Students becomes fully operational in April and they are set to review vice chancellor pay, grade inflation and help for disadvantaged students, as well as look at high tuition fees which has also been an issue this month. And that sounds good except, the concerns are that they’ll cut the pay of senior figures without doing anything to fix lecturer pensions or pay, and so several vice chancellors in support of the strike are actually calling for the government to guarantee pensions, like they do for teachers and local government. Essentially nationalising them. Will it happen? Hopefully but considering only months ago the government were looking to hire outie with a face Toby Young to help the management of university funding and their governance, or that Theresa May is confused why tuition fees she voted for are so expensive, and the Education Secretary keeps getting passed over to whichever MP is slowest to say no, I’m not sure they’ve learned much of a lesson on how to do it properly.

BEN BRADLEY SONG

Now here is the tale of a Tory MP
Who went by the name of Ben Bradley
Jumped on a story about Corbyn did he
But it turned out he did so libellously

Oh Ben Bradley Oh Ben Bradley
Naïve arrogance and smugness was he
But legal action happened swiftly
So he had to say sorry for all to see.

A new MP in Nottinghamshire
On the internet he played with fire
He thought he were quick and he thought he were clever
Scribing mean comments about whoever
Give vasectomies to the poor, police brutality is fun
Public sector workers don’t know that they’re born
Oh he blogged and posted and tweeted and twaught
So many ideas no one should’ve thought

But then one fateful Februar night
He spied a rag with his beady sight
It said his opponent was a spy
And so thought Ben, bring his downfall will I
But oh ridicule because without fact check’un
His pompous swagger did come undone

Oh Ben Bradley Oh Ben Bradley
Naïve arrogance and smugness was he
But legal action happened swiftly
So he had to say sorry for all to see.

And so whenever you see read some hype
You must research before you type
Whether you’re a Labour red or a Tory blues
You should know better than to be fake news
And that is the morale of this story
The sad tragic tale of Ben Bradley
Oh Ben Bradley Oh Ben Bradley
So he had to say sorry for all to see.

INTERVIEW

Italy. Europe’s high heeled boot hoofing a turd into Africa. I like Italy as place, mainly for the food and the food and of course, not forgetting, the food. But the country itself is in a tricky situation right now, with a ton of national debt, an increase in anti-immigration rhetoric and as they go to the polls on Sunday, another one of those Western world elections where really, no one has the faintest idea what on earth will happen. And I know those were feared due to Brexit and Trump, but then pulled sort of back by Macron depending on how you feel about his shiny face, then ruined again by Austria but here we are with no clear picture if Italy is going to go centre-right with a sex pest leader who looks like when Bishop in Aliens melted and can’t actually be prime minister because of criminal convictions, go centre left with a leader who already resigned as Prime Minister because no one liked his power grabbing constitutional referendum, or go for an anti-establishment party created by a comedian, now lead by the creepy guy from your 6th form college who’s campaigning for pro-green but anti-immigration policies because somehow you can love the planet but hate everyone else on it.

There is a lot to unpack with normal Italian elections with them having rapidly changing governments as well as an election system that works with a lot First Past The Post a bit of Proportional Representation and a tiny smattering of Italians abroad voting for 12 seats. And all that plus a lot of arm waving. But this year is particularly complex due to an awful lot of reasons, so rather than even attempt to get my head around it like, er, spaghetti round a fork, ok that was weak, but mmm spaghetti, I called in an expert to explain what it’s all about. John Hooper is the Italy and Vatican correspondent for the Economist and has been a journalist reporting on matters abroad for over 30 years. John has been covering the run up to the election extensively and his twitter feed has been a fascinating read of facts, insights and hilariously odd stories about election candidates having their cars blocked by police for parking violations. John very kindly found time in his busy schedule to chat to me, but as I mentioned earlier, unexpected snow in Rome slightly messed everything up. I’m pretty sure ‘snow in Rome’ is a phrase not unlike ‘when hell freezes over’ and as a result of everything stopping John had less time to chat that previously hoped. However I got to ask him a good few questions and hopefully this will give you as informed an insight as you can get into what may happen this coming weekend:

INTERVIEW
Big thanks to John for agreeing to talk to me. You can follow John on twitter @john_hooper, read many of his articles on the economist.com and his most recent book, The Italians, an insight into the unique character of the people of Italy, is available to buy from all good bookshops, all bad ones and all morally ambivalent ones too. The Italian news agency site in English that John mentions is https://www.ansa.it/english/ so check that out too.

Again, as always, I have a few interviews in the bag for future episodes but I would love to hear from you who you’d like to hear on this show or what issues I should interview people about. I say hear from you, I mean read. Please don’t call me. Who actually calls people? Where do you live? The 90’s? If you do have any suggestions please send them too:

JINGLE

And now, because I didn’t get to ask John all the questions I wanted to, I thought I’d just find out the answers for myself and then rely them to you in a badly informed way with probably loads of mistakes and bad pronunciations. I mean, it is 2018, with this level of expertise I’m probably overqualified to be foreign secretary.

So very quickly….

FIVE STAR

Are they called Five Star because it’s lead by the 80’s British pop group? No, that’s very obscure and only System Addicts will understand that gag. Are they called Five Star because even the people who complain on TripAdvisor that the an ice hotel was too cold or a museum had too much old stuff in it, even they must like them right? Well no, but also yes as Five Star could gain a large amount of seats in the Chamber of Deputies, Italy’s house of commons. But probably won’t win though that’s likely because they won’t want to form a coalition with any of the other parties because you can’t be an anti-establishment party if you hang around with the establishment in the establishment and hence the problem of anti-establishment parties. Are they called Five Star because they get great Edinburgh reviews? Well Five Star were founded by a comedian called Beppe Grillo, so that is possible. And no I’m not getting any big ideas don’t worry. They were set up as a retaliation against left and right wing politics and are a self declared populist movement. Which I wasn’t sure you can do. If I tell people I’m definitely funny that doesn’t mean they won’t boo me and down thumb my youtube videos does it? Except Five Star are now popular so maybe there’s something in that. Five stars refer to their five key issues which are public water, sustainable transport, sustainable development, environmentalism and a right to internet access so you can tweet your top gags in-between planting trees. Except in their current campaign with new leader Luigi Di Maio, they are also very Eurosceptic for reasons John explained and quite anti-immigration wanting an end to what they call the sea taxi service that brings migrants to Europe from Africa which I don’t think is like a proper taxi. I mean I barely trust most Uber drivers on the road.

Which brings us to….

IMMIGRATION

Which is the hot topic for this year’s election because, you know, I think it’s a pre-requisite for any predominantly white country in the Western world in the 20 teens. Italy is generally the first landing point for refugees arriving from North Africa and Italy has seen 600000 immigrants arrive in the last four years, and a foreign born population increase by over 5m in the last 16 years. And we all know rising immigration plus failing economy equals racist pointing fingers! Ah this decades magic maths. The League are a far right fascist party who’ve gone for the boring old ‘Italians First’ slogan because no one’s original anymore, and they want closed borders and to deport 100,000 immigrants. I do often wonder if we should just allocate a big island to all the world’s racists and then they can live there together in harmony, building walls. But then I remember they’d be immigrants to that island and they’d have to hate themselves which could make it tricky. But The League and smaller fringe fascist group CasaPound named after the racist poet Ezra Pound not an Italy version of Poundland, they are gaining support and there have been a number of attacks on immigrants. The problem is, rather than condemn all this, some of the main have decided all this anti-immigration sentiment sounds fun so have adopted it too, with Forza Italia lead by if Hamburgler was a sex criminal Berlusconi declaring that ‘migrants are a social bomb’. I’m not sure he can say that about anyone when his social life revolved around bunga bunga parties. The Democratic Party are the only ones not towing the anti-immigration line but…..

ITALIAN REFERENDUM

They are lead by Matteo Renzi, a man who was prime minister until Dec 2016 when he held a referendum for constitutional reform which would have reduced the amount of ministers in the parliamentary houses which was a generally popular idea, except in his reform, it’d have meant the senate would’ve had few vetoing powers over things he did as Prime Minister and it basically looked like a big ol’ power snatch which is also probably the name of one of Berlusconi’s parties. Anyway the public said Nope and Renzi resigned. His party has been in power since though and hey, you never know, second time lucky?

And lastly…

HOW EXACTLY DO THE ELECTIONS WORK?

Right, deep breath, I’m going to try and explain this even though I really don’t understand it. There are 630 seats in the Chamber of Deputies, aka Italy’s House of Commons, and 309 in the Senate Of The Republic, aka Italy’s House of Lords except elected and without Lord Tebbit making people ill. In the Deputies, 232 seats are elected by First Past The Post, 386 by Proportional Representation and 12 by Italian voters overseas. In the Senate it’s 102 by FPTP, 207 by PR and 6 by people who don’t even live there anymore but like ruining it for everyone else. So candidates put their names down for first past the post voting in one constituency but can also be on five proportional representation lists in locations of their choosing. Then voters get two slips, one for the lower house and one for the upper, and put a cross in each slip which somehow counts for both FPTP and PR. Confused? Hell yeah. Then last year the rule that any party that got 40% gained an absolute majority got scrapped so now it’s even more likely that to have a majority you’ll need a coalition with the larger party’s leader becoming Prime Minister unless Forza Italia win in which case it won’t be their leader because he’s a crim.

Got it? Right, now you can all sit back on Sunday and watch the results roll in, completely confused by what any of them mean because you don’t speak Italian. Vaffanculo!

BREXIT FALLOUT

Oh happy day, oh happy day, Labour have finally decided on a Brexit policy, sort of. Kinda. For months now Corbyn has had interviews where he’s said he wants a jobs first Brexit which didn’t mean much to anyone. I mean jobby’s first I could understand, and it would feel pretty apt considering all the shit will hit the fan before anything else. So jobs first and protect jobs but also Brexit which feels like some sort of clever trick question but it’s not really doable to have both. Then across the Labour party different people would give different opinions on what they wanted with some super remainers, some big leavers and then Barry Gardiner who changed his mind about 12 times. But today Corbyn said he wanted a ‘comprehensive customs union’ with the EU. What on Earth does that mean though? No idea. Thanks bye.

Joke, I don’t have much of an idea but again, I’m going to try. It’d mean being part of a customs union where we’d have access to the EU’s free trade tariffs and might get a teeny tiny say in them but wouldn’t get to veto anything you didn’t like and we’d probably have to pay a ton for it too. But it’d also mean there’d be no need for a border between Northern Ireland and the Republic. On the whole probably better than the Conservatives complete animosity towards the idea of a customs union, as they think they can find another way towards what they call, frictionless trade. Which I think is where all your goods are really greased up then just slid over to you. Except between Ireland and Northern Ireland because there’d be a whacking great big border there with men with big gloves on to catch stuff because the Conservatives keep forgetting they exist.

So the Labour stance could be a good move, but Corbyn also added some nonsense about how we’ll get a Brexit dividend when we leave which we won’t, it’ll just be money we don’t pay into a pot that we get more back from. So it’s a dividend in the way that all that money the government have cut from police budgets is a dividend they’ve saved except now all the crime isn’t being stopped and loads more money is being lost in crime things, it was ultimately a shit idea. Corbyn also said that while it’s not migrants driving down wages, it’s employers driving down pay as a result of freedom of movement, which is total balls and every study shows either no, or a positive impact of immigration on wages with only one study showing a tiny negative impact of one per cent fall for low waged workers over eight years. Which is less than has been caused by austerity. If Corbyn wants a real rise in workers wages he should campaign to deport the government.

So that’s Labour for now, until they probably change their mind later this week. Meanwhile the Conservatives Road To Brexit speeches have continued with David Liddington today made a boring, boring speech that amounted to saying that Brexit would be great for devolution. Something most people agreed with until we realised he meant for law wise for Wales and Scotland. Except it probably won’t be because the EU withdrawal bill looks set to return powers over things like farming to Westminster so that things like food labelling and hygiene rules can be universal all over the UK. You know unlike now when they’re all universal all over Europe and Wales and Scotland can do it themselves instead of letting parliament fuck it up for everyone. Then David Davis’s speech last week mostly amounted to him promising it won’t be as awful as a cinematic dystopian nightmare, which I translate as being ‘it’ll be shit bad but not very entertaining at all.’ Two more Road to Brexit speeches to go, from May and before that, Disgraced MP Liam the Disgrace Fox which will probably be a collection of things he makes up on the spot about how if we leave Europe we’ll finally be able to eat sandwiches and trade with Martians or something, before denying he said that when questioned by journalists. On the Andrew Marr show on Sunday he banged on about how we’ve got to stop seeing Europe as the centre of the debate and we’ve got to orientate the United Kingdom. Sure, let’s remove Europe from the middle of the conversation about leaving Europe. Idiot. We’ve got to stop seeing the Sun as the centre of the solar system, we’ve got to orientate the Earth. We’ve got to stop seeing the film we’re going to see as the centre of our afternoon, and we’ve got to orientate reading a review of the film on Rotten Tomatoes by someone who can’t spell. I really hope he falls down a well.

END

And that’s all for this week’s Partly Political Broadcast podcast. Thank you for listening. I mean that sincerely. Did it sound sincere? What about if I say it like this? Thank you for listening. No? How about now? Thank you for listening! Don’t forget to review the show on iTunes or wherever you pod at, donate to the patreon.com/parpolbro, or ko-fi.com/parpolbro or write in on the facebook, twitter or email or aggressively shout at me in the street if you see me. Ha! More fool you, I’m not going outside for ages.

Thanks to Acast for sheltering this show under their podbrella, and to my brother The Last Skeptik who I mean, doesn’t actually do anything directly for this, but hasn’t complained about me using his beats for over two years now so the thanks feels deserved.

This will be back next week when Theresa May will have made her Road To Brexit speech laying out how we’ll be keeping all the things the EU had just on shuffle and with a different instagram filter.

KISSES

This week’s show was brought to you by Mad Max 2: Road To Brexit. ‘A hugely boring film’ Empire magazine, ‘Nothing really happens for ages’ The Times, ‘Well that’s 20 months of my life I’ll never get back’ The Guardian. Mad Max 2: Road To Brexit: The Future Belongs To The Maddening

Email Tiernan