Further Reading

Transcript

Ep46

Hello and welcome to the Partly Political Broadcast podcast episode 46. I’m Tiernan Douieb and I reckon I spend at least 20-30 minutes a day on the throne depending on what I’ve eaten, and I’m now 13177 days old, which is only a 7th of a year, so Elizabeth II celebrates her 65th year on the throne you realise she really needs a lot more fibre in her diet. Yes, toilet jokes! I’ve started with a toilet joke because it’s a good way to prepare you all for the world heading faster and more rapidly down the lav each day.

In the UK MP’s voted to trigger Article 50 because you know it’s better to regret things you have done to ruin the future of the country than things you haven’t done to leave it in it’s current ruined state instead. 114 MPs voted against because of the will of the other people. And Shadow Home Secretary Diane Abbott abstained from voting due to a migraine. Which many were angry about, but to be fair Labour right now is a constant severe debilitating headache for everyone in the UK. And like a dud firework producing a depressing wet fizzling out, the vote lead to the Brexit White Paper. So called because there’s basically fuck all on it.

Meanwhile in the US the Patriots had a surprising last minute victory at the Super Bowl and if that isn’t an analogy for America right now, I don’t know what is. Several of the Super Bowl adverts promoted the benefits of immigration leading Trump supporters to say they’ll now be boycotting those companies including Budweiser and Coca-Cola. With any luck more and more companies will join in and eventually ardent Trump-eteers – that’s what I’m calling Trump fans now, with the hope that it means you can buy a mute to quieten them with – eventually ardent Trumpeteers will be so weak from a lack of food and drink that they won’t be able to invent massacres anymore. Yes, Kellyanne Conway, President Trump’s counsellor and official US Ambassador to the Upside Down accused the press on a Fox News show of covering up the Bowling Green Massacre an event that never happened. But fair play to Conway, channels like Fox news normally don’t shy away from stories that are completely made up, so maybe she has a point. Trump has also managed to argue with the Australian Prime Minister about who wants to take in immigrants the least like some sort of giant racist tennis game where both players are constantly over the line, and Lady Justice joined the women’s march a bit late but with devastating effect as a federal judge halted his travel ban and the court of appeal blocked the Tangerine Nightmare’s attempts to overturn the decision. Homeland security upheld the court decision which is great news even if Donny T tweeted calling the move ridiculous and referring to Judge James Robart as a ‘so called judge’. Vice president Mike Pence said on CBS that by saying ‘so-called judge’ Trump wasn’t questioning the legitimacy of the judge. Which means it is as concerning as we thought and Trump genuinely isn’t sure what to call people who preside over court proceedings. If you weren’t already concerned that America is being led by a man who would struggle to beat a chicken at Boggle, the President took to Twitter, his personal soapbox that sadly lacks anything he could clean his mouth out with, to say that he has instructed homeland security to check all people entering the US very carefully. Phew! Because I don’t know if any of you have flown to the States in the last few years but up until he said that they were just asking ‘hey put your hand up if you have a bomb!’ and hoping people would be honest. In the UK Parliamentary Speaker John Bercow made an excellent statement about how Donald Trump will not be addressing parliament, which is great. However I’d really have loved to have heard what Dennis Skinner was going to heckle him with and now we’ll sadly never know.

Speaking of idiots, primordial boozer Nigel Farage has split up with his wife so I guess he is keen to stay in the single market after all. I wouldn’t normally comment on gossip like that but its important to note that Farage’s partner is German and so I guess he is a man of conviction after all if he knows he can’t leave the European Union while staying in another. I expect in the divorce he’ll say he just wants to get out as quickly as possible while trying to wangle his way out of paying any sort of pre-arranged exit fee.

Thanks again for listening to the podcast. It took till February but we’re finally at a week where the news has slowed enough that you can complete at least one mindfulness exercise before the next headline arrives. In fact I have a handy list here of some you might try: You could mindfully breath in deeply then on the exhale shout your favourite swear word before tweeting it to everyone or using it as your Facebook status and then throwing your computer out of the window. Or clench your fist, breath in, then release while punching a Nazi. Or try stretching and yawning really really loudly everytime someone boring tries to tell you to do mindfulness exercises. I find all of those really help. Better? Oh. Lots of stuff on this week’s show and something I always forgot to say is if you are a new listener, firstly HELLO! Secondly, do go back and listen to some old episodes if you have the ear time, as while my jokes expire in relevance about 10 minutes after I say them, a lot of the interviews and content is still relevant because sadly the world hasn’t been fixed despite all my efforts. For example, on this week’s show I’ll briefly mention the new NHS upfront charges for foreign patients, but if you go back to Episode 40 there’s a whole bit on the myth of health tourism, Episode 38 has stuff on the whole Virgin Care privatising the NHS scam and Episode 41 has an interview with Emma Runswick from the BMA about why the NHS is underfunded. On the other hand, if you’d prefer why not just write to me asking why I haven’t covered those things and I’ll send you a sarcastic response?

A few quick things before we get into the show. Firstly a big thanks to Kat Day for donating to the Patreon. Kat asked if I could plug her blog and I’m not going to do it because she asked but because it’s great and I enjoy reading it. It’s called Chronicle Flask and can be found at Chronicle Flask.com. It’s all about looking at dodgy science and the last update is about the truth behind whether toast can give you cancer or not. Though sadly still nothing about what happens if you’re bitten by radioactive toast so I guess I’ll have to just experiment myself and see if I get magical toast powers. Or you know, just look crusty which would be much the same as now. Kat is also on twitter @chronicleflask. Mega thanks to her and if you too would like to donate to the PPB patreon then head to Patreon.com/parpolbro and anything you can give towards the making of this show is super appreciated.

Also thanks to Matt Hoss who’s helped with PPB for a while now, my brother The Last Skeptik who’s beats I keep nicking for the show and has a new EP out with Dream Mclean called Cheese On Brown Bread EP so check that out on the SpotiTunes. And almost lastly if you like the noises I make on this show, come and see me live. I’m at Leicester Comedy Festival on Thursday 9th Feb at 9pm at the Exchange Bar doing a work in progress that will be a lot of work and very much in progress but it’s ok as tickets are free. If you’re not in Leicester but in London then I’m doing a similar thing at Angel Comedy Club at The Bill Murray on Feb 21st and 22nd. That’s also free but you can book in advance for a £5 via the Angel Comedy website which you can find tucked away in the corners of the internet. And very lastly I’m on the very fun Worst Foot Forward podcast that came out last week. It’s by very funny comedian Ben Van Der Velde and Barry McStay – who is very funny too but is an actor so I can’t tell if he’s just pretending or not and the episode I’m on is about the worst ever protest. Check it out. Oh and post-lastly, check out George Monbiot’s guardian piece – yes guardian because I’m a metropolitan liberal elite, just one with no cash or influence or class – Monbiot’s piece on how corporate dark money is taking power on both sides of the Atlantic. I know some people aren’t big fans of George as he sometimes writes about going fishing with a spear or something but do have a read of that piece as it’s proper investigative journalism and stuff I hope to cover soon. I’ve posted it up on the Parpolbo facebook group if you haven’t already joined, and I’ll tweet it again from the @parpolbro account this week too.

Right! This week’s show has a chat with historian Giles Macdonogh about the history of fascism because I thought that might be useful, and of course more bloody Trump and bloody Brexit because you know, that’s every bloody week. I’m very much hoping to get back to some more investigaty bits soon and to bring back the Partly Big Question of the week too but it sort of requires world leaders to stop being such dicks first. The balls in your court May and Trump. Hmm mentioning court to Trump this week probably isn’t going to help is it?

So, here’s some POLITICS THINGS:

SOUTHERN RAIL

Train driver’s unions RMT and Aslef have finally reached a deal with the train company who specialise in getting nowhere Southern Rail. Full details of the deal haven’t been revealed yet but it’s expected that it should improve the rail service from what it is now, although that’s not saying much as currently it’d be an improvement to have one sad donkey carrying a single passenger from Brighton to London twice a week in comparison to now. Even if the donkey keeled over, it’d probably still be more reliable. However Aslef who represent the guards that would be let go under Southern’s proposals to give more responsibility to the drivers, they still have to vote if they want to go ahead with this deal. RMT who represent conductors are still going ahead with their strike action as they’ve been barred from the talks about the deal and if nothing else you’d think Southern Rail would want RMT members in on it to help conduct the conversation. So it’s very slow progress, much like a Southern Rail train, and it may amount to nothing. But it’s the first iota of hope for the 500 guards who may lose their jobs and all the passengers might actually be able to use the rail to commute again. Transport Secretary Chris Grayling, a man who always looks like he’s been told he’s going to get pranked but doesn’t know when, insisted that he doesn’t believe there needs to be fewer people on the railways. Though he may have just said that because he looks like the sort of villain who’d tie someone to the tracks. The Aslef members vote on February the 16th so we’ll see if the plan goes full steam ahead after that or more, well, like Southern Rail.

STOKE ELECTIONS

The Stoke On Trent by-election is taking place on 23rd February after Tristram Hunt realised that his job required him talking to common people and it seems to be a race between Labour and UKIP for the seat. Tough race considering politically Labour seem to be going nowhere and UKIP are usually travelling backwards. Running for UKIP is party leader and poundshop Michael Stipe Paul Nuttal and things aren’t going great for him. Nuttall registered his home address on his nomination papers for the election, as an address in Stoke On Trent. However Channel 4 journalist Michael Crick noticed that the home is empty, was still available to rent up to the day before and has been on the market since November last year. Top wankers Guido Fawkes – yes I tried to think of a witteir name for them but that is the best description – took a pic of Paul sleeping on a mattress on the floor in an otherwise empty room. So has Paul Nuttall commited electoral fraud or does he actually believe in squatters rights? Or perhaps he’s a minimalist, and has committed to that in home décor, policies and hair? And if he isn’t living there then is just an economic migrant to the area and will he kick himself out if elected? Either way he’s now being investigated by police and to top it all off, while walking through Stoke today with Nigel Farage, local Stokians through eggs at them both resulting in what are my favourite photos of 2017 so far. I bet as those eggs neared his face, Nuttall wondered if they were tiny reflections of himself until it hit him. It’s really not looking too good for UKIP in Stoke, especially when locals are far more pro-Eggxit than Brexit. I’ll report more on the Stoke election next week.

HOUSING

The government is promising to make things easier for renters, because so many now can’t afford to buy homes as all the landlords in the Conservatives own them all and rent them out. The white paper – yes another one, yes I’ve already made a white paper joke this podcast and that’s your lot and I haven’t even got to the Article 50 one properly yet – is going to encourage landlords to give guaranteed 3-year family friendly tenancies which I presume means kids will only pay half rent, and make it easier for companies to build properties for rent or as they used to be called in the old days, homes. They will also be looking at new measures to stop landlords offering sub-standard properties but that doesn’t fill me with hope as it was only in January last year when MPs voted against a measure to make sure landlords make their homes fit for human habitation. So what will the green paper insure the new homes are fit for? Human visitation but not staying too long? Animal habitation? Conservative habitation? Ha! I did a mean gag. The number of people in private rented accommodation has doubled since the year 2000, with many spending over half their salary on rent. Or like me, more than half of what doesn’t even constitute as a salary with the other less than half going on crisps and I can’t see any of these measures doing anything to help me with my crisp addiction. Typical! House building is at a low at the moment, and I don’t mean they are just making bungalows. Affordable house building is at its lowest for 24 years and I don’t just mean they are making really small cheap bungalows. So this is a serious issue that needs to be tackled quickly and Communities Secretary and grandson of Ming The Merciless Sajid Javid said they are determined to make housing more affordable. Though he is also a landlord himself for properties in London and once publicly said there is no such thing as a housing bubble, which is the sort of thing you’d say if you were inside the bubble and hadn’t ever left it because outside the soapy walls are angry tenants. Ministers have promised they still won’t allow building on the Green Belt which will please the green giant and his trousers, but if developers already have planning permission to build there they must use it. If you go all the way back to episode 6 of this podcast when I spoke to Jonn Elledge and he explained why the green belt isn’t very green and we probably should build on it, then you’ll realise how confused everyone gets about it. More on the white paper next week once they’ve actually released it.

INTERVIEW PART 1:

Do you remember last year when everyone called everyone else Hitler? It was like 2016’s bae, do you remember? Ken Livingstone said pretty much everyone was like Hitler, Boris Johnson said everyone else was like Hitler and now in 2017 it’s finally gone global as people all over the world have pointed at Trump and said he’s a lot like Hitler. But is he? I mean Hitler wasn’t that big a fan of Russia and I’m pretty sure he wasn’t orange and didn’t tweet. There is no doubt that far right extremism is on the rise, with white supremacist Barney Gumble aka Steve Bannon being trump’s right hand man, the KKK endorsements of Donald as though there has been some sort of pillow sale on, and the rise of hate crimes and graffited swastikas across the US since Trump’s election victory it does seem like a return to the days of the Nazis. Similarly the rise in hate crime in Britain and the worrying popularity of far right candidates in France and Hungary amongst others is all very worrying. But, is it a return to fascism? And what exactly is fascism? And why is it so difficult to spell or is it just me that keeps missing out the first s? Is there a better joke about the SS in fascism that I could make that wouldn’t be just awful?

Well the answers to all of those questions, well ok, the first few anyway, are in history. As astronomer Carl Sagan said ‘you have to know the past to understand the present’, as did the 26th President of America Theadore Roosevelt and to be fair, he probably said it first. If only Carl Sagan had looked back and checked. Anyway, who better to explain than historian Giles Macdonogh. Giles is an expert in German history and has written several books on the rise of fascism and world war II including ‘After The Reich’ and ‘1938’. Giles also writes for various papers, is brilliantly and openly angry about Brexit on his twitter feed and somehow as well as all that, or perhaps at the same time which might explain the excellent tweeting, is an expert on wine. Giles very kindly explained what happened before and if it’s happening again. Now I should say, I asked Giles to talk more about the politics of fascism as I’m sure you, like me, know many of horrors inflicted by Hitler and about the holocaust. So I don’t want you to think we’re not mentioning it in this but I thought it’d be best to try and work out what the similarities between then and now are rather then discuss everything that Hitler did. I also didn’t ask if it was ok to punch a Nazi, but I also sort of did. And regardless I still think it is.

EXCUSES EXCUSES

Somehow, the recording temporarily stopped just as I asked Giles question number 1. His reply and all the rest is fine so I’ve re-recorded the question which will mean it sounds odd compared to the rest of it. Look, I’ve made it several episodes without a screw up so stop looking at me like that. Stop it.

Ok, here’s my re-recorded question and Giles:

1. Do you think what we are seeing now, with Donald Trump in the US, and a return for nationalism in the UK, (also France, Hungary etc) is the beginnings of a return to fascism or is that an over the top reaction?

INTERVIEW

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

TRUMP TRUMP TRUMP

So firstly let me quickly reel off a list of things off that the US President has done that are several billion levels of concern above the spider in my bathroom that has somehow worked out how to hang in his web so I can’t get him in a glass. Which is bigly concerning. Yes, Trump is much, much worse than that and it’s becoming so exhausting trying to keep up with his daily outbursts of Joffrey-ness. For example there is his talk of dismantling the Dodd-Frank regulations that were put in place to stop the 2008 financial crisis from happening again. It stopped bankers from creating things like credit default swaps and all the sorts off stuff that meant bad debts got sold off again and again leading to people losing their homes, decimating their savings and plunging the world into an almost recession. But Trump thinks Dodd-Frank should be taken apart because, and I quote ‘friends of mine that have nice businesses, they can’t borrow’. Well boo frikkin hoo. Friends of mine also can’t borrow due to the global financial crisis of 2008 you unbelievable arsebadger!

Next on things that if you read them in a Stephen King novel you’d think he’d gone too far are Trump’s gun law proposals. The House Of Representatives has already voted to overturn Obama’s regulations that prevented people with mental health conditions from buying a gun. This is because critics of it thought the regulations also unfairly affected people with eating disorders or say mental health issues that affect them managing their finances and why should they not have guns? Because why should people suffering from any mental health issues be denied the right to leave the safety off and accidentally shoot themselves in the face? The measure simply meant people with mental health issues had to have background checks before they could purchase a weapon. The fact that the US largely ignores and underfunds treatment of mental health issues is a whole other issue but for now it’s all ok as even if you have schizoaffective disorder with strong desires to kill, you won’t be able to get decent medical help but you can still pop to Guns-R-Us and for shopping therapy instead. Trump has previously promised to allow loaded handguns in schools because I guess that is one way to make kids learn and eliminate gun free zones so there is probably more to come. More than 30,000 people are killed by firearms in the US every year so guns are an even bigger threat than terrorism. On the plus side, increasing gun availability means there is even more chance Trump will get shot too and hey, I suppose I did really enjoy Westworld.

Now the thing I want to focus on this week is Trump’s phone call to Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull. Initially it sounded like Trump had refused to take 1250 refugees that Australia has rejected, and now it seems he has committed to honour it. I’m not sure what’s more surprising here, that Trump has chosen to honour it, or that he knows what honouring something means. Trump’s original refugee ban that has now been overturned by federal court, and his initial refusal to take in refugees rejected by Australia are harsh and it is, as with everything he ever fucking does, concerning but it’s important to also know that other countries are just as shitty to refugees too.

Australia for example has been refusing to let any refugees arriving by boat enter the country since 2013. A policy brought in by misogynistic, climate change denying hateful piece of shit and then prime minister Tony Abbott. Known as Operation Sovereign Borders racist bigot Abbott – did I say racist bigot in the list before? He’s got so many character traits its hard to keep up – Abott claimed a 90% reduction in illegal maritime arrivals because they refused to note any vessels existence and using offshore processing, forces all boats to resettle elsewhere, mainly now Nauru an island in Micronesia and Papua New Guinea because you know, those places are so massive that they can really take extra population stresses unlike tiny weeny Australia. Since 2014 the Australian High Court ruled that the Australian government was breaching non-refoulment obligations meaning that….

Sorry, what’s that? Oh. Wait.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN JINGLE

Non-refoulement is a principal of international law that forbids the rendering of a true victim of persecution to his or her persecutor. It is a main part of refugee law concerning the protection of refugees from being returned to places where their lives will be in danger. Basically they’re looking for safety, don’t be a dick bag and fuck that up, which is basically what Trump was doing with many people affected by his ban, so he is, under international law, an official dick bag. Ok, I made that bit up.

Under the Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull they’ve kept this operation despite the leaking of loads of files by the Guardian showing how badly mistreated the refugees were in camps on Nauru and Manus Island. Loads of people protested calling for them to close but they haven’t and instead, Turnbull is now just sending the 1250 on Nauru and Manus to Trump’s America, which you could say, is even more cruel. Odd how the country’s full of immigrants who took over the land and destroyed the culture and lifestyle of the indigenous people are quite so shitty to others eh? I guess they know just how dangerous people can be.

I say that but here in the UK we are awful to refugees too. If you listen back to episode 15 when I talk to Rebecca Omonira about the treatment of people in UK detention centres like Dungavel and Yarl’s Wood, the conditions sound horrifying and many are kept in ‘unlimited detention’ spending months and sometimes years in these grim places before their application is processed or they are deported sometimes back to dangerous places completely contravening non-refoulement obligations. The UK have also only accepted a very minimal amount of refugees, only 216 in 2015 despite millions of applicants. They have to meet stricter criteria than what you demand on your match.com you snob. In 2013 gay and lesbian asylum seekers fleeing death threats from their own countries, some of whom had been waiting 16 years to be approved, were asked to provide photo or video evidence of highly personal sexual activity to the Home Office for proof of sexuality. Which is actually quite similar to what you asked for on your match.com profile isn’t it? Then if you do get approved you get about £5 a day to live on for food, clothing and everything and you’re not allowed to work for 12 months. So you’re essentially trapped in poverty and in a country where it rains all the time and Nigel Farage keeps saying you’re trying to ruin things. It’s almost like sending refugees to us would contravene the non-refoulemet obligations. Plus while we’ve all been worried about Trump, the UK have spent £2.3m on a wall in Calais to separate the Calais jungle from passing trucks. That’s after the camp was bulldozed, and the refugees sent all over France. So that’s £2.3m that could’ve been used on proper shelter, or even for things like the NHS or social care or just to buy me sweets for saying non-refoulement more times in podcast this week than anyone else.

So yes, Trump is an awful human being but we need to challenge and protest about the way people are treated here and Australia at the same time. Otherwise we’re just complaining that America aren’t being mean to refugees in the right way which amounts to some of the worst one down-manship I’ve ever heard. Though if UK, US and Australia all try to outdo each other in being the absolute worst, I guess us citizens will have to start fleeing to other countries and let me tell you, we should totes aim for Sweden, Germany or Brazil cos they are winners.

Oh and what I didn’t have time for this week is all the unnecessary deaths in Yemen in a US military raid that was badly planned that Trump has now blamed on Obama and all seemed to be in aid of Trump getting a golf course built in Dubai. Oh and he suggested in a talk to the military that there is loads of terrorism in the world especially Europe but the dishonest media won’t report it. This sort of complete making up of stories is depressing. I mean, I wish he’d at least make up nice imaginary happenings. It says something about his lack of creativity when Conway imagines a massacre and Trump thinks up terrorism. They should probably get some adult colouring in books or something to expand their artistic side. But yes, it is depressing but on the plus side, and I think that’s what we always have to look for in these current times, we can all just tell Trump he’s absolutely right, terrorism is rife all over Europe all the time everywhere and that it’s probably best for his safety if he just doesn’t visit. Ever. Ever ever.

And now back to Giles:

INTERVIEW PART 2

Huge thanks to Giles for that very informative chat. History is not my strong suit – that accolade goes to my set of medieval armour, sorry – so I genuinely didn’t know about the different types of fascist political ideals, nor that the racist side of it emerged with Hitler. And it’s also interesting to hear that Trump isn’t so much a fascist but a sort of totalitarian authoritarian kleptocratic horror with fascist elements. Phew! So we should be all ok then, right? Guys?

Anyway, Giles can be found on Twitter @gilesmacdonogh and his website is macdonogh.co.uk. You can find links to all his books including his two on WW2 German history and fascism called ‘1938’ and ‘After The Reich’ and as he says, a new book is coming soon. As for his recommendations, Professor Frank McDonough is on twitter @FXMC1957 and can I also recommend the brilliant historian Alex Von Tunzelmann who is @alexvtunzelmann on Twitter as she recommended Giles to me. I’ve got a few interesting guests lined up but as I say every week if you have someone you’d like me to talk to, for the podcast I mean, not for a chat, though you know, that’s cool too, then drop me a line @parpolbro on Twitter, the parpolbro group on Facebook and Partlypoliticalbroadcast@gmail.com.

BREXIT FALLOUT

Yeah still this fucking thing. When will it stop? I’m not sure, but there must be an end to downhill right? It can only be so long before the bike that is the UK hits the low wall, large rock or inconveniently placed postbox that is the Brexit conclusion right? Sadly like some horrible glitch in a shitty cycling game we can see that postbox but it’s still oh so far away and the approach is getting more and more disconcerting. This past week has had more idiocy from disgraced disgrace Liam Fox the disgrace who said that it was unlikely the UK would hit the £1tr export target he made up in his own stupid disgraced head because he made it up in his own stupid disgraced head. I mean I’m paraphrasing but trust me, that sums it up. Then the Article 50 vote caused more disruption from Labour who are constantly angry that they have to oppose the Tories when they’ve got themselves to take down. Keir Starmer said as democrats they should vote for the democratic referendum result. But still 36 Labour MPs voted against it, 7 of which are in majority Leave voting constituencies. And what this shows is that, er, MPs are people. Probably. And therefore vote sometimes for what their constituents want, sometimes for what they think they should want and sometimes, in the case of Diane Abbott, just not turn up at all. The only Conservative MP that voted remain was Ken Clarke who gave a 20 minute speech comparing the whole affair to a Mad Hatter’s tea party, which isn’t fair as the Mad Hatter didn’t have any innovative jams. Clarke also said that no sensible countries have referendums proving his point by naming Germany and then ruining by mentioning America. Clarke has never liked letting people have their say though which is why back in 2012 he proposed secret courts keeping people entirely away from the trials of terrorism suspects.

After the vote of course, the white paper and unlike the Beatles I wouldn’t say on review that it’s remotely near the government’s greatest work especially as it contains so many repeats or covers of earlier stuff. All the stuff on the Great Repeal Bill, Northern Ireland and Security is pretty much as vague as it always was, just now slightly clarified vagueness with sentences like how the Northern Irish border between them and the Republic shall be ‘as seamless and frictionless a border as possible’. So made of graphene then? Or how the UK government aims to take control of our own laws which I mean, you’d hope because if they lose control of our own laws, minus the EU ones too, we’ll be some sort of weird lawless state. Though on the bright side, I really did like Westworld.

On EU migrants in the UK there’s no more clarification than we’ve already heard from May and again on trade with EU there is just vaguaries about having the most frictionless trade possible in goods and services. What so made of grapheme then? Perhaps the plan is that with all this lack of friction we’ll just slide back into the EU without anyone realising? And again after some super dull stuff on leaving the legal framework for nuclear power but negotiating a new one and leaving the customs union but negotiating a new one and how we’ll have a mutually beneficial exit and you realise all of this will be done by disgraceful Liam Fox, after all that, it reiterates that no deal for the UK is better than a bad deal for the UK. Great. It’s nice to set such high parameters. I mean, covered in graphene like a British Iron Man who’s going to give us anything but a great deal? Oh wait. It’s Liam Fox wearing the suit isn’t it? Oh fuck.

END

And that is all for this week’s Partly Political Broadcast. Please give the show a review on iTunes if you can and spread the word to all who’ll listen and if they won’t listen, why not do an interpretive dance that they can watch? I suggest it includes a pivot bump choo choo and at least two Turkish shimmys. Also if you fancy bunging a dollar to the show’s Patreon it will help me to spend more time on this show instead of playing Lego batman on my phone which, er, I have to, er do, for, er, financial reasons. Yeah that sounded believable right? The patreon is Patreon.com/parpolbro. And of course drop me a line about the subjects in the show, the subjects in your mind, the royal subjects or the subjects on your current language learning course – I’m trying my best to learn French properly and I’m thoroughly enjoying saying la nouriturre – any of those things to @parpolbro, the parpolbro group on Facebook or partlypoliticalbroadcast@gmail.com. Hopefully I’ll see some of you at my Leicester show this week or at the Angel Comedy shows in a few weeks time. This of course will be back next week when I’ll be giving my special guide to how to tweet like Donald Trump. Tip: Run into a wall a few times, then give a dog your phone and hope autocorrect is on.

This week’s podcast was brought to you by the letters RIP and the numbers 450,000 in memory of all those killed in the imaginary Bowling Green Massacre.

CLICK TO GO BACK