Getting The R Down – Tests that aren’t tests, Baby Wilfred, and a chat with a former COVID19 111 call centre worker and APT Gemma Norburn

Released on Tuesday, May 5th, 2020.

Getting The R Down – Tests that aren’t tests, Baby Wilfred, and a chat with a former COVID19 111 call centre worker and APT Gemma Norburn

Thanks to new government methods of numbers not meaning anything, this podcast now has 100,000 listeners a week! You know, if you include all the people who don’t listen to it. This week Tiernan (Laddish – The Guardian) looks at tests that aren’t, Baby Wilfred BoJo, and the Hancock track app. Plus a chat with a former COVID19 111 call centre worker and another chat (I spoil you I do) with the so very cheery APT Gemma Norburn who talks about being an NHS mortuary worker and cake.

FOLLOW GEMMA ON TWITTER HERE: @mortuarygem

READ GEMMA’S BLOG HERE: https://mortuarygem.com/

AAPT’S WEBSITE IS HERE: http://www.aaptuk.org/

Open Democracy’s piece on call centres during the pandemic: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocracyuk/revealed-thousands-at-risk-from-covid-19-in-dangerous-call-centres/

Pope Lonergan’s lovely podcast: https://anchor.fm/pope-lonergan/episodes/Bangin-on-About-Elderly-Care-edhkpq

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Further Reading

Linear liner notes

Thanks to new government methods of numbers not meaning anything, this podcast now has 100,000 listeners a week! You know, if you include all the people who don’t listen to it. This week Tiernan (Laddish – The Guardian) looks at tests that aren’t, Baby Wilfred BoJo, and the Hancock track app. Plus a chat with a former COVID19 111 call centre worker and another chat (I spoil you I do) with the so very cheery APT Gemma Norburn who talks about being an NHS mortuary worker and cake.

Links and sources of info from Gemma’s interview:

Also:

All the usual ParPolBro stuff:


Transcript

Ep186

 

Hello and welcome to the Partly Political Broadcast, the comedy politics podcast that definitely has over 100,000 listeners a day, as long as you include all the listeners this show could have if more people listened to it. I’m Tiernan Douieb and as Health Secretary and a face you made on your plate using only vegetables Matt Hancock announces the brand new coronavirus track and trace app, I feel he’s missing a trick by not making it only available to those on 5G networks.

 

Yes, it’s been a week of achievements for the government, if you remember that they usually consider anything that gives them a chance to avoid blame for something, an achievement. Firstly within one day of returning to Number 10, the Prime Minister and lumbering ball of congealed pith Boris Johnson became a dad for the 7 millionth time, as his fiancée gave birth to their son. who they’ve named Wilfred, probably after the boy in Bash Street kids who had a jumper pulled over his mouth, which is no doubt due to lack of PPE. His full name is Wilfred Lawrie Nicholas Johnson. Lawrie is a name of Scottish origin meaning ‘crafty’ so that’s obviously after his dad and Nicholas is after the two doctors that treated the PM when he was in ICU because nothing will make them feel better than the honour of their name going to yet another child Boris will likely neglect as much as the NHS. It’s impossible yet to say if Wilfred is his father’s son, but he does have a mop of blond hair, an inability to construct a sentence, and is savvy enough to know when to arrive just as his dad was running out of excuses to skive off work. Johnson has said that he will take paternity leave later in the year as he wants to focus on the leading the government’s response to coronavirus right now, proving that he hates being a dad so much, it’s the only thing that he’d go to a COBRA meeting in order to avoid doing. In an interview with the worst thing you can do to paper, The Sun on Sunday, Johnson revealed that while he was in ICU he feared never meeting Wilfred, which would have been awful for his son never getting to see his dad, as that’d make him just like all of Boris’s other children. But apparently it was the baby that gave the Prime Minister the strength to pull through which means sadly, while I think children are blameless for the world’s ills, little Wilfred is going to have to live with that one forever. Thanks very much.

 

Just as Johnson offspring 7005 appeared in the world, Johnson also got to announce that boom, the UK is past the peak, which I guess means it’s now all downhill from here. Apparently, the end of the virus is in sight, or as Johnson said, its like coming out of a huge alpine tunnel and now we can see the sunlight and pasture before us. A pasture that’s had to be turned into a graveyard as while he was off piste an awful lot of people died. Yes the UK now has the second highest amount of deaths in Europe, but as Foreign Secretary and extra in the series Chernobyl Dominic Raab says, now is not the time to do global comparisons, which he said during the daily press briefings where they always show a global comparison chart. Other countries don’t have the same level of reporting deaths apparently, meaning they might have even included those that happened in care homes from the start, rather than only from last week once everyone had complained about it, like the UK did.

 

It’s ok though because we are focused on getting the R down, as Matt Hancock keeps saying, as though it’s a song where R stands for a swear word he’s too prudish to sing. R actually stands for reproduction, which is why Johnson so far can’t really understand why people want to stop it. How do you get the R down? Well testing helps, which is lucky as last week the government finally hit their target of 100,000 tests in a day by the end of April. How did they do it? Was it 100,000 including existing tests that had happened on a previous day that happened to have the same first letter? Was it 100,000 tests but not all of them were for COVID-19, some were pregnancy, there was at least two driving tests and an SAT? No, you cynic, have a bit more faith than that. It’s because 40,000 tests were sent out, but not necessarily done. Brilliant! That means next time I do a live show, I can consider tickets sold by the amount of people who took a flyer and then might have put it in the bin. Their pledge was only to get 100,000 tests a day by the end of April and now they’ve done that and it’s May, they don’t have to bother anymore right? Otherwise how would you explain far fewer tests everyday since? Silly me, I can’t expect the Department of Health to understand how numbers actually work, when BBC’s Panorama revealed that when they said they’d given a billion pieces of PPE equipment to the NHS, they’d counted each glove in a pair individually to add up the numbers. Individual gloves? Who did they think was treating patients? Michael Jackson? In some cases, individual antiseptic wipes were counted rather than the pack. Individual anti-septic wipes? Who did they think was treating patients? Prince? You have to remember, these numbers aren’t wrong they’re just not quite what we expected them to be and maybe that’s our fault for not buying gloves one at a time or failing to take credit for all those jobs you applied for but never heard back from so were clearly successful in. You’d think that if the government’s method is as soon as it’s left them then it’s done, that Johnson would be parading around boasting he has at least 100,000 kids if you include all the times he’s spaffed somewhere outside of his trousers.

 

Matt Hancock’s new test, track and trace app should help, despite sounding like it’s a misjudged idea by a team from the Apprentice designed to make stalking fun. So far the app has failed all clinical safety and cyber security tests, making it very much on brand with every app Matt Hancock has been part of, including the Matt Hancock MP app which was notoriously riddled with more bugs than Daffy Duck’s nether regions. Then there was the Conservative Party Conference app that anyone could hack into and get every users private phone numbers from, with party security pretending it was an error rather than a necessary function for them to carry out their post conference partner swapping cocaine orgies. Still that should mean the app opens up all data of everyone using it, including any coronavirus symptoms and we can all join and collectively play a very scary game of nationwide tag. It is being tested in the Isle of Wight, which is a strange place for any tracking app, as there’s only really two main roads, so you’d probably get a pretty accurate and far cheaper tracking system just using a pair of binoculars or asking all the curtain twitchers about their neighbours.

 

Numbers of people in hospital with coronavirus is falling, and at the time of recording, the daily death toll is the lowest it has been ever. So that means all anyone wants to know is when can we go outside and lick people till it all kicks off again? Well the Prime Minister will be revealing full plans this coming Sunday but he has said only a mass produced vaccine will defeat the virus and he’s urging countries to pull together to share their expertise, you know, like how they tried to share ventilators but Johnson’s team seemed happier to give lots of money to arms manufacturers to make things so unsuited to help people breathe they’re probably now reselling them to Saudi Arabia to use in Yemen as weapons. The PM’s speech will be at an online pledging conference set up by the EU, meaning that Johnson will probably just inappropriately shout about unleashing Britain’s potential, causing everyone to shut their borders with us for good. I mean, that’s if he turns up at all. He’s actually expected to say that a vaccine is the only way ‘to win this battle and build an impregnable shield around all our people’ which again makes it very hard to know if he’s talking about the virus or it’s his inner monologue screaming for help. Chancellor of the Duchy and an accident involving a giant cyst and a treadmill Michael Gove keeps referring to how the government are preparing for the UK to return to a new normal, like the beginning of a twilight zone episode where everyone removes their face masks to reveal they now look like him. A tweet from Gove’s wife and only person to make a career from poison pen letters Sarah Vine, showed their bookshelf at home which contained a novel by a Holocaust denier and The Bell Curve, a eugenics book that infamously states that white people are smarter than black people. Of course it’s unlikely any books on Gove’s shelves say anything about him as chances are he’s not read a single one and just uses them to point at daily and shout ‘I’m tired of experts’ before attempting DIY based on a vision he had and nailing his leg to a radiator. But you do have to wonder with books like that, is Gove’s idea of new normal much like the old normal but depressingly even whiter than white?

 

Possible post lockdown workplace restrictions include additional hygiene procedures and social distancing where possible, which will likely make a lot more places nicer to work for many, especially women in Parliament. There is talk of schools going back in June, but the National Education Union has set up its own five tests that its saying the country needs to pass before that can happen. To be honest, if anyone knows about doing well in tests it would be them. What about the over 70s who were told to stay in lockdown for at least 12 weeks? Well Matt Hancock tweeted that that is factually wrong and misleading, and it is only the clinically vulnerable, not all over 70’s, look at the government advice. Which if you look at, says that the clinically vulnerable includes all over 70s regardless of medical conditions. But then maybe Hancock is treating this like the tests and that once you get into your 80s you’re no longer an over 70 so can go outside again.

 

But we’ll have to wait a week more of lockdown before we can really find out what any of the plans are, or more likely, are not. And while everyone is hankering at finding out when the lockdown will end, no one has asked just how the government plan to persuade the 6.3m workers who have been furloughed that they should look forward to working again. Though if schools don’t open for a while there’ll be a whole lot of parents willing to do anything else.

 

In other news, MP and perpetual heat rash Conor Burns has resigned as a trade minister after a report found he used his position to intimidate a member of the public, and no, not just by reading aloud from last year’s the Conservative manifesto. Instead in a loan repayment dispute involving his father, he threatened to use parliamentary privilege to further his family’s interests, which just isn’t allowed. Everyone knows the only way you can use your standing as an MP to affect your family’s financial interests is by doing nothing about tax havens and being friends with lobbyists, come on Conor, catch up.

 

Lastly with VE Day happening on Friday, still during lockdown, some councils have been suggesting a nationwide stay at home street party involving having a picnic in the front garden after watching Churchill’s speech be repeated on TV. Never in my life have I been more pleased about not having a front garden.

 

ADMIN

 

Howdy howdy, lets get rowdy. Yes, that’s my new way of greeting people, after I was reviewed in the Guardian this week for my part in Mark Watson’s 24-hour show where I inhaled a vast amount of hot sauce, and they called me ‘laddish’. I’ve never been called laddish in my life and I’ve decided I should embrace it and only now do comedy about er, tits and football, or something. Is that what lads talk about? Maybe I should talk about beer as well, lads probably do that. Anyway, I’ll be pleased to leave this lockdown with a new laddish personality that will probably involve me getting a tattoo I regret and having sunburn only on my stomach. But er yeah, that was my weekend, as Mark Watson did a brilliant 24 hour show and raised just about £40k for three charities, I popped in for a brief amount of time to officiate a game between a puppet cactus and a CBBC presenter and then later down spoonfuls of sauce containing caroline reaper chilli. I’d love to pretend this is what the lockdown has done to me, but let’s face it, I’d have done it live, I just now have to display my desperate need for gratification in my own home which is more embarrassing. I’m not sure I’m fully onboard with online gigs yet. I used to use the journey to gigs to get my head into my set, work on ideas, think about how to start. Now, I’m just in my PJs and I sit at a computer and can only tell if people are laughing or clapping by the emojis they use, which are often the same ones I use if I’m being sarcastic about something on Twitter. Its looking like theatres aren’t set to restart till at least next year so I’m assuming comedy won’t either, so I’ll have to get used to it, unless any of you fancy paying me so I can stand outside your window and shout jokes at you from the street? Or maybe I perform in a venue, but you all watch from screens at home and I can see your faces on ipads placed on chairs, as I tell jokes and look at you checking your phones or wandering off. It does beg the question of what us comedians and performers should do for a year, I’m not sure about this new normal at all. I do like this phrase going round of ‘there can be no return to normal because normal was the problem to begin with.’ I agree. And normal is the most boring. I think we need a new, without the normal bit and maybe we can all leave this lockdown with new found abilities to go to meetings in our pajamas and with haircuts we ruined by ourselves. You have to dream.

 

What am I on about? I have no idea, I really need to talk to adults again, and I think I would actually murder someone for a pint, which judging by some suggestions might be the only way to get into a pub before 2021. Anyway, you’re here and I appreciate that as always. Thanks for all the nice comments you gave about the interview with Pope Lonergan last week, which I passed onto him and he was chuffed. He’s also released a podcast where he chats to one of the 98 year old patients at one of the care homes he worked at, which is such a lovely listen, so I’ll pop that in the pod blurb for this week’s show. Big thank you times also to Christine, James, Doug, Somebody and Anon for your ko-fi donations this week. And if you too can spare a few quid toward this show, or towards me having no income stream until some point next year if I’m lucky, then please head to ko-fi.com/parpolbro where you can sign up for recurring monthly donations of even just a few quid, or patreon.com/parpolbro where you can sign up for less than that as its in US dollars and America is totally fucked right now so all their money is like piss. Of course if you can’t donate please just do give the podcast a review on any of them podcast apps where you can do that, or just tell a friend to subscribe. They don’t even have to listen, just subscribe then walk away. Oh wait they can’t walk away. Oooooh lockdown! Grrrrr!

 

A few quick admins this week. One, the absolutely brilliant charity Arts Emergency who support so many young people, are launching a new appeal this Tuesday, so probably by the time you hear this. They need a minimum of £20k to expand existing community projects when the crisis ends in order to support areas that may not receive help otherwise. I’ve sad that very badly but head to arts-emergency.org after 4th May to have a look or find them on Twitter at @artsemergency and I’ll be RTing about it too. They are such a good and necessary charity so please help them out if you can.

 

Also, I’m on bloody loads of other podcasts this week and next, including Jason Reed’s excellent So I Start A Revolution From My Bed podcast, all about ways to chill out and that, then I say a few lines on the lovely Ande Case’s Monsoon Jackson podcast series 2 that starts this week and I’m also going to be on Nathan Caton’s Give Me Some Good News, which is like it says on the tin, all about good news. So do check those out.

 

On this week’s show there are two interviews. Yes two! One with a former COVID19 111 call centre worker who was made redundant in the middle of all this crisis and was kind enough to talk to me about it, anonymously, and the other with the brilliant Gemma Norden who is an Anatomical Pathology Technician and works in an NHS mortuary. Weirdly, the latter is a lot more upbeat than you might think. Plus there is a bit about tests that aren’t tests. So go on, get all that in your brain.

 

 

INTERVIEW WITH TASH

If you’re between the ages of probably 18 to 40ish, chances are you’ve spent a least a chunk of your life in a call centre, learning mostly how to restrain yourself from shouting ‘oh fuck off’ down the line at least 15 times a day. I worked in one for a housing association and I’d have had as much fun being trapped in a windowless room with an angry barking dog. But while call centre workers have a lot of hang ups at the best of times, arf, including zero hours contracts, low wages and generally being a barking wall for angry callers, welcome to the now times where you’re expected to keep to the script even if your bosses can’t be bothered. Not only are there several reports of call centre workers being told to come into a workplace with no social distancing measures, but right now it appears even if you’re working for essential services, there’s no job security whatsoever. It’s pretty galling when you work for a service like 111, in place to give advice, reassurance and security to many, but there is absolutely none of that for you at your end of the call. The first of two interviews this week is a bit different from normal, as for a start, I can’t tell you their name. For the sake of this, I will give them a fake name, which I’ve chosen as Detroit because Sorry To Bother You is a good film set in a call centre, so that’s more interesting than, I dunno, Callie McCallerson or something. Anyway, Detroit, yeah I should’ve chosen something else, worked in a 111 call centre, on the coronavirus specific calls, until she was made redundant, along with many other staff, in the middle of the pandemic, unable to apply for any government cover packages and with no support at all. A friend pointed me in the direction of a post on social media and I got in touch with Detroit to see if she’d be happy anonymously letting me interview her. Yes, it’s almost like proper journalism or something. Anyway, what happened to her is really shitty to say the least and depressing to know that so many workers are still being entirely neglected in this time of crisis, as well as just how unprepared and badly trained those on the frontline for people’s concerns are. Have a listen:

 

INTERVIEW WITH TASH

 

Thank you so much to, er, Detroit for trusting this podcast with that, it’s really appreciated and the sort of situation we should be hearing more about rather than story after story about how the Prime Minister is still fertile. I really should have thought of a better name for her than Detroit shouldn’t I? Anyway, I obviously can’t point you towards anywhere to follow her or anything like that, so do just check out the Open Democracy piece on call centres during all this that I’ve popped in the bio, and if any of you would like to help or support, er, Detroit, get in touch with me and I’ll try and work out a safe way to sort that out.

 

And there’s another interview in a few mins, but first, some of this…

 

Over the weekend Matt Hancock announced that the government had reached its target of over 100,000 tests a day by the end of April, with 122,347 tests carried out on the 30th. However it doesn’t take much of a close look to realise that in this instance, carried out means that someone had just physically removed the test kits from the building they were made in, and not, as you might have assumed, used them to test people yet. Sure, we’re all very used to the government moving the goalposts on their own targets so many times that they are no longer in a football pitch but acres and acres of inadequately netted fields, as the cabinet tell confused strikers that this is how the game always works, just keep punting it till no cares anymore and stops asking questions. Remember when they replaced the methods for stats on child poverty so it was no longer based on income, because as we all know, having no money doesn’t make you poor, you can be completely deprived and wealth AF, which is why Iain Duncan Smith is one of the most deprived people on Earth. Sorry, sorry. I mean depraved. Or when employment figures suddenly included people on zero hours contracts who hadn’t worked for two weeks, because in that instance you were working, just for the government’s dodgy stats and no they won’t pay you for it. Just recently we had the promise of 50,000 new nurses which included 20,000 nurses that weren’t new and were already working and no it doesn’t count if they’ve had a haircut or put glasses or a fake moustache on for each shift. Alongside lying buses, other election promises that weren’t achievable and now, as BBC’s Panorama revealed, pieces of PPE kit sent to hospitals being counted individually to add to the numbers. No, an individual antiseptic wipe isn’t one piece of Personal Protective Equipment, not even if you hang a single one off your genitals like a sterilised codpiece. This week’s test targets are just the latest in a series that wasn’t critically panned enough at the beginning and so now they keep letting it run assuming it must be popular.

 

Much like the October 31st or die in a ditch promises that sadly never came to fruition, Matt Hancock had insisted April 30th was when 100,000 tests a day would be happening by and staked his rather pitiful career on it, with his team privately comparing the end of last month to polling day. They are both similar, but by older people putting crosses in boxes for the Conservatives in the election, its sadly led to more older people being put in boxes with crosses on them than there should be, because of the Conservatives. Testing is really important, with South Korea being a prime example of where it worked. The idea is that if the amount of new cases falls below the amount of people being tested, then you can work to contain the outbreak and start lifting the lockdown. Except the UK has consistently been at the bottom of the testing chart, by April 18th there were only 5.07 tests per day per 1000 people compared to Iceland at the top of the chart doing 115.07. Sure, there are only 115.07 in Iceland so that’s probably not that hard, but 5 and a bit out of a thousand per day really isn’t trying. Not only that but at the end of March, deputy chief medical officer and Edna Mode cosplayer Jenny Harries, said that mass testing was not appropriate for the UK, which is odd as that’s always been the opposite of what the Education department has said for the past 10 years. To be fair, while countries like Germany have managed very quickly to do a lot of daily testing, that is because they have a lot of diagnostics industries and medical technology, compared to the UK’s underfunded NHS with pathology labs with less test tubes than Boris Johnson’s freezer, in prep for when he needs a few more weeks off in 9 months time.

 

So in order for lots of tests to happen, the country has needed new mega-labs with automation handling the kits as they are returned, then there were issues with getting tests from people to the robots, then back to people again which resulted in the army stepping in to take and deliver swabs, because nothing says good bedside manner than a man in full camo gear who’s been trained to shoot someone in the face, welding a large cotton bud to stick deep into your nose like like he’ll threaten to do it again if you don’t give answers. Actually, that’s not fair as many military staff were taught how to conduct test in centres by specialists from Boots which means if anything, they had to be taught to be less attentive, especially if you don’t have a points card. Lots of test centres are held a good distance away from town centres for safety purposes, but it means people, especially busy NHS staff can’t get to them easily and when they can trek to unused car parks or where ever else they may be held, if its not army run, it might be Deloitte or Serco who are famous for failing institutions and they’ll likely lose your test before you take it. In an attempt to boost test numbers, the Department of Health changed who was eligible so you know, it would take even longer for frontline staff to get their results. So symptomatic over 65s could suddenly get tests as nothing would help them feel better from COVID-19 problems than sitting outside Chessington World Of Adventures as a sergeant uses a q-tip to lance your tonsils with all the delicate nature of a drunk sledgehammer. So could key workers though nothing was said about shoe repairers but I guess that’s because they’re often the same thing. Arf.

 

So, with just over 23,000 tests on 23rd April, then just over 50,000 tests taking place on the April 28th, it seemed suspicious that out of nowhere 122,347 tests took place on April 30th, well over the 100,000-daily target. What had happened? Had they changed the definition of tests so it meant anything that wasn’t a test, like a spoon or a mouse? Well you were right to be suspicious, well done Columbo, as over 40,000 of the tests had just been dispatched to people at home, or hospitals. There’s no way of knowing if the people at home had tested themselves properly or not at all, of the hospitals had yet carried out the tests they were sent. The head of the government testing programme admitted that they had changed how they counted tests, saying that any test that goes outside the program is counted as having been done. Even if they haven’t been. Even if they’ve gone to someone’s home and that person stuck them all up their bum or fed them to a gerbil. It was all one big single day effort on account of the government, Amazon and Royal Mail who distributed them in order to reach a meaningless number, thank goodness it was at a time everyone was in or they might have been a few short. Prime members of course got their’s several days earlier.

 

The amount of tests being done is increasing every day, but far later than it should have been happening and at a slower rate. In fact, according to Michael Gove’s press briefing on the weekend, even with the new counted figures, less tests were taken at 76,496 so it looks like even getting them sent out for people to put up their bum isn’t happening as quickly as they’d like. It was probably silly to have a target for tests in the first place, though sillier not to have had this prepped and ready years ago for tests to start happening in January. Still, knowing Matt Hancock, and the last ten years of Conservative government’s, they’ll just change the definition of things you should lose your job over to meaning that you still keep your job, if, let’s be honest, that hadn’t already changed it to that some years ago.

 

 

 

 

INTERVIEW WITH GEMMA

 

As a comedian, I have died onstage many, many times, and let me tell you, it’s not a very fun experience. So, it came as something of a surprise when I spoke to our second guest this week, who deals with actual death on a daily basis and she was one of the chirpiest people I’ve spoken to in weeks. Death is something we’re all having to confront in this pandemic, either watching statistics on the daily briefings rise every day, losing people close to you to the virus or just occasionally wishing for it as you have to do yet another day of endless parenting. While other cultures have had some very sensible views on death, either returning to the earth or maybe coming back as a creature that can’t use twitter and therefore has a happier life, the Western world’s view of it is mainly fear, worry, turn the news off and pretend it isn’t happening and if we keep using this skin cream made of rhino hormones then we’ll age backwards and be safe. Anatomical Pathology Technicians are the NHS workers you might not get to see on the news so much right now, as they work in the mortuaries, which year round, is always a dead important job. Sorry. So after seeing them tweet about how important it is to recognise the efforts of APT workers, I asked the Association of Anatomical Pathology Technicians, if I could talk to someone about how things are right now and they kindly put me in touch with Gemma Norburn an APT at Barking, Havering and Redbridge Universities Hospitals NHS Trust. I asked her all about how things are, exactly what support there is for people who have lost someone, Death Cafes and there was quite a lot of chat about cake. As I said, I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised by how upbeat and nice this interview is. Hope you enjoy, here’s Gemma:

 

INTERVIEW WITH GEMMA

 

Thanks so much to Gemma for that. I was going to say for finding time for me in her busy schedule but after speaking to her, it seems like she’s thankfully not too rushed off her feet at all! I should add that if you are a mortuary worker in areas like say, London or Birmingham, you might be having a very different & more hectic time right now, which I understand and feel free to write in and let me know if you are. Or maybe aren’t and are currently very happy in a basement full of cake. You can find Gemma on Twitter @mortuarygem and her blog at mortuarygem.com. The Association Of Anatomical Pathology Technology, which is the professional body for APT staff within the NHS and public mortuaries, can be found at aaptuk.org or on Twitter @aapttweets. Gemma’s NHS trust is Barking, Havering and Redbridge University Hospitals, which you can find at bhrhospitals.nhs.uk and the Good Grief Trust are at thegoodgrieftrust.org or @goodgrieftrust on twitter too.

 

Of course, if you have ideas or suggestions for who or what or where, no not where, as we’re not allowed outside. So just who or what about I should talk to someone for doing and that. Hmm. Wait. Who I should talk to or what about. There you go. Got there in the end. Then drop me a line @parpolbro on Twitter, the Partly Political Broadcast group on FB, the contact page at partlypoliticalbroadcast.co.uk or email me at partlypoliticalbroadcast@gmail.com. Or you could try like Kayne West, a therapist’s pinata of a man, to communicate your ideas to me only in beeps instead of words, and everyone will think that lockdown has caused you to believe you’re R2D2 and keep pressing your face till a picture of Princess Leia appears. As always, it’s probably just best to email isn’t it?

 

 

END

 

And that’s all for this week’s Partly Political Broadcast podcast. Thank you for still listening to this show and somehow making it all the way to the end and because you did, its big reward time for you. Yes, that’s right it’s just for you big enders, no that’s still not right, that at this point in the show, I get you some Hot Pol Goss Facts. And this week, as the May bank holiday has changed from Monday May 4th to Friday May 8th, cast your mind back to 2011 when the coalition government tried to move the May bank holiday to the following Friday in order to skip it being on Worker’s Day and instead call it UK Day, you know, to celebrate all the best things in the UK so we could still remember what they were as each of the next 10 years were spent dismantling them. One of the main Tory MPs proposing this was MP for Romford Andrew Rosindell, looking like someone forgot to dust Gregg Wallace’s head.  There’s lots of reasons Rosindell shouldn’t be allowed to decide on such matters including a career of overclaiming expenses, but the main reason is did you know that Rosindell’s parents were alledgely kidnapped by a bank holiday when he was four. So, it’s just too close for him, too close. On a bank holiday, you can apparently find him running around at night dressed in his work clothes shouting at any buildings that are closed. He’ll be doing a lot of running around this year then won’t he? So yes, a very long, and hugely unnecessary HOT POLL GOSS FACT! This week. And if you enjoyed that, or hated it but in a way that made you feel alive again, then please do tell others to listen into this show, share it on ya socials, review it on the podcast apps and throw a few pounds to the ko-fi.com or Patreon.

 

Gratitude buckets for Acast who host this damn thing, my brother The Last Skeptik who gets older this week, officially, so do give him some birthday wishes, to Kat Day who does all the linear liner notes for the website and to Mushybees and her amazing art skills.

 

This will be back next week when it turns out that a glitch on Matt Hancock’s Test, Track and Trace app finds incorrectly that the Isle of Wight is a hotbed of coronavirus and it’s made into the British version of Spinalonga, and they get isolated from the rest of the UK for 3 years. Luckily, no one there notices much.

 

BYEEEEEEEEEEEEE

 

This week’s show was sponsored by the Department of Health’s ultimate lockdown survival kit containing six pieces of ultimate rations to get you through your time stuck at home. The 6 items include the box it comes in, the plastic packaging inside, the bubble wrap inside that, a pack of silica gel and two fingers of Twix. 6 individual pieces of survival kit, from the DoH, providing exactly what you need and asked for so don’t question it.

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