Further Reading

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The Conservatives say they owe it to the children to get them back in schools during the pandemic, which makes you wonder just what it is kids did to them to now deserve this sort of repayment. Plus immigration bill, all the rest of the week’s nonsense and awfulness, Brexit Fallout returns and you know you missed it and there’s a chat with Dr Tony O’Sullivan (@drtonyosullivan) from Keep Our NHS Public (@keepnhspublic) on how privatisation of the healthcare service has made the now time even worse.

Links and sources of info from Tony’s interview:

• • Dr Tony O’Sullivan on Twitter – https://twitter.com/drtonyosullivan
• • Keep our NHS Public, on Twitter – https://twitter.com/keepnhspublic
• • Keep our NHS Public, website – https://keepournhspublic.com/
• • 6 Demands from NHS staff to help us tackle Coronavirus, petition – https://www.change.org/nhs4all
• • Health Campaigns Together on Twitter – https://twitter.com/nhscampaigns
• • Docs Not Cops on Twitter – https://twitter.com/DocsNotCops
• • Docs Not Cops website – http://www.docsnotcops.co.uk/
• • The Lowdown website – https://lowdownnhs.info/
• • NHS Supporters on Twitter – https://twitter.com/nhs_supporters
• • John Lister on Twitter – https://twitter.com/JohnRLister
• • NHS for Sale: Myths, Lies and Deception, book by Jacky Davis – https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0850366275/ref=cm_sw_r_tw_dp_U_x_e9AXEb9VS134Q 
• • Our NHS on the Open Democracy website – https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/ournhs/
• • The NHS Support Federation website – https://www.doctorsforthenhs.org.uk/allied-organisation/the-nhs-support-federation/
• • Doctors for the NHS on Twitter – https://twitter.com/Doctors4NHS
• • Allyson Pollock on Twitter – https://twitter.com/AllysonPollock
• • Allyson Pollock’s website – https://www.allysonpollock.com/
• • Independent SAGE on Twitter – https://twitter.com/IndependentSage
• • Independent SAGE website – http://www.independentsage.org/
• • Save Lewisham Hospital Campaign website – http://www.savelewishamhospital.com/

All the usual ParPolBro stuff:

• • Twitter – twitter.com/ParPolBro and twitter.com/TiernanDouieb   
• • Facebook – www.facebook.com/groups/ParPolBro 
• • Website – www.tiernandouieb.co.uk/podcast
• • Donate to the Patreon – www.patreon.com/parpolbro
• • Buy me a coffee – ko-fi.com/parpolbro
• • Review the show on iTunes – itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/partly-political-broadcast/id1075342863?mt=2 
• • Review the show on Stitcher – www.stitcher.com/podcast/partly-political-broadcast
• • The Last Skeptik – www.thelastskeptik.com
• • Kat on Twitter – https://twitter.com/chronicleflask
• • Buy Kat a coffee (go on, spread the love) – https://ko-fi.com/katday

Transcript

Hello and welcome to the Partly Political Broadcast, the comedy politics podcast that should work but can’t quite get to work so doesn’t really try. I’m Tiernan Douieb and this week as the Education Secretary and worried horse Gavin Williamson says that we owe it to the children to get them back to school, you wonder just what on earth they did to him to deserve that sort of repayment. Or maybe it is a gesture of kindness, by allowing these kids to contract coronavirus and have their family socially distance from them for safety, maybe they’ll grow up neglected and uncaring enough to join the Conservative Party and finally build up their youth membership.

The government’s coronavirus strategy has raised a lot of questions in the last few months, with often reoccurring ones being ‘are you all drunk?’, ‘are you all stupid?’, ‘are you all stupid and drunk?’ and ‘wait do you actually just want everyone to die?’ But after this week’s insistence that nursery, reception, year 1 and year 6 pupils all go back to school by June 1^st, you also have to add ‘have you ever actually met a child before?’ You know, the small people who occasionally arrive home in the summer when their private school closes for a few months and you’ve screwed up the holiday booking so you have to see them for at least a day before you go to the other side of the planet without them. Or in the Prime Minister and bulbous sigh Boris Johnson’s case, you know, they’re the things you keep leaving at people’s houses after a one-night stand, like phone chargers. If they’d ever met a child, their own or anyone else’s, they’d be fully aware that it’d be easier to enforce strict hygiene rules on a dung beetle and social distancing measures on conjoined twins, rather than an age group whose main source of protein is eating their bogies and licking everything they find on the floor. Williamson said the problem is that the longer children miss school, the longer they miss out. Well that is what kids are like eh? Always want the latest thing, not wanting to miss out, so first let’s make sure they all get the coronavirus like everyone else has and then at Christmas it’ll be the new coughing don’t touch me Elmo toy. What you have to understand is that the Education Secretary is concerned for the poorest and most disadvantaged children who will be most left behind by schools closing, which is unfair as when the Conservatives put 4m into poverty through austerity, they were at least hoping they might not have to accidentally bump into them in the street afterwards. Is that not too much to ask for?

Those poorest and most disadvantaged kids are also more likely to live in crowded and multi-generational households, you know, where the virus would spread pretty easily and I’m not sure the best way to cheer up, what Williamson patronisingly calls ‘unhappy families’ is giving them all a free two week stay in ICU. The government’s guidance says that schools should reduce class sizes to groups of 15 or less, meaning that after years of cuts, there might finally be almost enough supplies for every pupil. In those classrooms that were more than 35 kids, what about the rest of the class? Or is this part of the government plan to increase the workforce again? I mean, I suppose going down chimneys is social distancing in a way. Other guidelines including staggering break, lunch, arrival and home times so that the school time-table becomes a daily military operation, where no doubt to fit everyone in, some children will arrive, have a break time, eat lunch then go home before starting on maths. What about the teachers too? More than 60 education staff have died of COVID19 since March 9^th and children are basically free public transport for germs. The Daily Mail, a paper because adding news to that word would be a lie, demanded that the country let teachers be heroes by allowing them to go back to work. Which not only ignores that many teachers are still working just either from home or teaching the children of key workers, but also seems to suggest that the path to true heroism is sacrificing yourself for a pointless cause. If that’s what the Mail really want to class as heroic, then you think they’d be a lot more supportive of suicide bombers. It says a lot that the loudest voices wanting teachers to return to work are a paper whose very existence is the opposite of education, and Chancellor of the Duchy and personification of the word congealed Michael Gove who spent 2010 to 2014 taking a four year long horrific shit all over the education system. The only time he has ever done anything that was actually in the best interests of teachers, it was when he stopped being education secretary to ruin someone else’s lives instead. Gove promised teachers will be safe in schools before seconds later saying that the only way you be sure not to catch coronavirus is by staying at home. Is his logic that they’ll be safe from other non-COVID things? I mean they’re unlikely to have a kitchen-based accident in school or get eaten by a lion and so maybe it is better to be at school where you definitely won’t get run over by a combine harvester. I mean as Gove said, at school they can make things safer, and may I suggest they do so by ensuring the pupils don’t actually turn up. Or better yet, let’s take Michael Gove’s education policies and let teachers who care about kids safely stay at home, and instead any rich person who wants to open up their own academy or free school and happens to be friends with Govey, they can surround themselves with mini-plague carriers for the benefit of the country. Someone give contrarian bore and evil Harry Hill Toby Young a call. He always seems to have far too much time on his hands, what with having no friends, and he can set up a hall and help all the children study the power of viral loads as they cough at him continuously for 9 hours a day.

Not all the government’s plans are terrible though. I mean opening up the housing market again and allowing estate agents to do physical viewings seems right, as most of us have always wished everyone at Foxtons would fuck off and die. I mean what better idea than to move home in the middle of a time when you’re still meant to stay at home a lot, a great idea if you’re feeling that right now just isn’t stressful enough. If you’re a renter, then your landlord can now demand that other people come and look around where you live, meaning if you’ve ever thought what was lacking in your home were large red crosses daubed on the doors and all but one of your housemates in hazmat suits, now might be the time to see how it looks. But hey, rules are rules which means you still can’t see your family members. Unless of course you can encourage them to sell their homes and you book in a viewing. Similarly, your kids can see their grandparents if you pay your parents as childminders and it’s likely any day now that you’ll be able to see your friends as long as it’s to snort coke on top of the Shard while discussing the stock market. Economy first, remember?

And of course you still have to go work if you can, but not by bus or train as Transport Minister Grant Shapps, a man who’s eyes are windows into more windows which then look out onto a brick wall, said it is civic duty to avoid public transport. Which means the government will ignore it, remove funding and blame anything that goes wrong on local councils instead. Which in a way they have done in London as Mayor and what if somehow Martin Freeman was even more boring Sadiq Khan has been blamed for Transport for London losing 90% of its revenue in recent weeks. Yes of course it’s a pocket-sized mayor’s fault that the pandemic happened, and everyone was told to stay at home and if he does indeed have the powers of pestilence and plague, we should learn not to wrong him again before a swarm of locusts engulf the London Eye. The government is giving TfL a bailout of £1.6bn but with a list of very strict restrictions, such as increasing the congestion charge and ending free travel for under 16-year-olds, because nothing helps the poorest and disadvantaged children like making it unaffordable for them to travel anywhere. Which I suppose is probably still safer than letting them go to school so maybe they do care after all?

The Chancellor and Crash Bandicoot Rishi Sunak went back on his concerns about people being addicted to furloughing and announced that the scheme will be extended until October, so workers can receive 80% of their wages to not go to work. A bit unfair considering the Prime Minister gets 100% of his for the much the same thing. That will add over £80bn in debt to the country’s coffers, but the Prime Minister insists that there will be no freezing of public sector pay or austerity measures to come, which means he’s found another word he can use like depravation or ‘shit-times’. Instead, he told the 1922 committee that he will be spending a lot of money on infrastructure, so we can expect bridges commissioned to be built over every river, canal and puddle in England by 2025. While there might be no austerity, the government are quietly winding up their ‘everybody in’ program which houses homeless people in hotels, meaning they’ll all be kicked out very soon and homeless again. Imagine that as your party record, showing how easy it is to end homelessness overnight, then deciding to bring it back anyway. I guess that’s what Johnson wants all the bridges for.

All of this because the R is going down, unless you speak to scientists who say it’s going up again, unless you speak to government scientific advisors who say actually its sort of variable and is sort of going up in some places and it’s so hard to explain that we’re not going to show charts anymore in-case it confuses you. We’re nearly at an alert level 3 but only if you don’t count all the deaths that the Office Of National Statistics are recording or all the tests the government still aren’t managing to do, in which case everyone is doing very well indeed. 17,000 people have applied for contact tracing jobs, which is where you draw a line around someone rather than touching them. No, sorry, it’s for working with the track and trace app to speak to people with COVID19 and find out who they’ve been in contact with. Michael Gove said during a press briefing that the system would be up and ready to run by the end of the month but one of the private sector companies running the contact tracing has falsely told applicants that the hiring has been paused, which it hasn’t. Great first move for a group of people who’ve been called in for their communication skills. But then again what better way to ensure social distancing at work by not having any staff there? Much like Johnson’s promises that there will be spot safety inspections of workplaces even though those definitely aren’t happening, but I guess that is safer right now than having someone random turn up to your factory.

The government have changed some of their guidance since last week, and advice is now that if you’ve experienced any loss of taste you have to stay indoors for a week, which is bad news for fans of Mrs Brown’s Boys. The Health Secretary and oh he’s only allowed to take calls for delivery as we don’t trust him with the pizzas Matt Hancock also announced that all over 5’s in the UK are eligible for a COVID19 test, though they haven’t said who’ll be saying if you’re over a 5 or not, and if you’ll just have to send sexy pics directly to Hancock himself and he’ll be in touch. To set an example MPs took part in the first ever virtual vote last week, firstly for the Agriculture Bill that will allow the import of food produced at lower standards, because nothing says future proofing the country after a pandemic quite like that chicken is 90% salmonella so I won’t be needing mayonnaise with it thanks. MPs also virtually voted to return to parliament properly in June, to be in close quarters with colleagues who’ve definitely had the virus. They willingly voted to increase their chances of getting ill. Or maybe they’ve realised that along with estate agents, this is what the public have really wanted all along and they are actually doing this in our best interests.

Then this week on Monday the immigration bill was brought to the house for its second reading with Home Secretary and the only person immune to coronavirus because she makes all foreign bodies feel unwelcome Priti Patel, saying that the government’s plans will lead to a high skill economy, which is unlikely unless it has details of all the cabinet being outsourced. The way in which the bill is structured suggests many currently on the frontline tackling the coronavirus are considered unskilled workers, probably because they save lives which goes against Patel’s principles. She initially said she was going to review the immigration health surcharge paid by foreign workers to use the NHS, something that unfairly penalises people who work in the UK and also pay tax, by making them pay again. But Patel decided to make no changes to it, meaning it will still be £624 a year from October. That’s not the review I’d have given it. I’d have said 1 star, lacks substance, the lead character is unrealistically callous and stupid at the same time and it’d do better with a more diverse cast. The bill hadn’t been voted on by the time I recorded this but with the 80 seat Tory majority its likely to pass this reading despite certain Conservative MPs calling for the bill to be softened, misunderstanding that this bill is already too soft for Patel as it doesn’t any waving of burning pitchforks. Still, its nice to know that if there is another pandemic or the coronavirus keeps rolling on, at least lots of people who supported this bill will end up getting treated by an unskilled British person who will genuinely have no skills and attempt to treat a virus with chicken soup, which will thanks to the agriculture bill, be 40% chlorine and the rest made up of avian flu.

Labour leader and flesh lord buckethead Keir Starmer now has a higher approval rating than the Prime Minister for the first time, probably on account of people realising that even if they don’t like what he’s saying, they can actually understand it. This has prompted immediate attacks from the right wing press with the Daily Mail saying that Starmer owns several acres of land worth up to £10m, so he can’t be a man of the people, unlike you know, their paper’s owner, a multi-millonaire who avoids paying any tax. The Labour leader bought the land in the 90s for his disabled mother, so she could keep donkeys on it after she was unable to go out very much and its really not much of a story. Donkeys are working animals at heart so it seems right Starmer would provide for them. Whereas Boris Johnson would probably have a field full of giant armadillos on account of them being very rarely seen. Health minister and the sort of person peanuts need a warning that they contain nuts on them for Nadine Dorries and two other Tory MPs shared a heavily edited clip by a far right activist saying that Starmer didn’t prosecute child grooming gangs. None of them have apologised, despite it being fake news and were just ordered to delete the tweets. To be fair to Dorries, she is so monumentally thick that chances are high she thought it was part of her job as a health minister to share doctored videos.

Meanwhile the Labour party’s new shadow housing minister and winner of name most sounding like a challenge on strictly thangam debonaire, said that cancelling rent would be very un-labour. And she’s right as labour support the workers and all those landlords are currently working very hard sitting around while other people do jobs. Instead Labour said they’d give renters 2 years to pay back any unpaid rent because what’s more labour than causing people to have unnecessary debt with no decent plan to pay it back.

And finally, an internal report into the Liberal Democrats shit election performance in 2019 was entitled ‘A High Speed Car Crash’ which is slightly unfair as I don’t think their former leader and child on too many E numbers Jo Swinson ever got the party moving that quickly. It’s a brutal and highly enjoyable read, with only 3 of the 61 pages being dedicated to the positive parts of the campaign and the rest blaming burnished door-knob Chukka Umunna, and a case of happy ears, which no, wasn’t their nickname for him. No one that gets the blame is still in the party, so it’s good to know that they still take after former Lib Dem MP and massive criminal Chris Huhne, and if they are in a high speed incident, they just say someone else was at the wheel and carry on.

ADMIN

Wotcha listeners. How goes it? Big news in Tiernan Town. Who’s had a COVID19 test? That’s right! This guy! And I’m sad to say I failed it, I got a negative which is really disheartening considering all the work I put in trying to huff other people’s coughs. I am of course joking, I’ve been very careful and stayed as socially active as I have been for years which means I’ve barely seen or spoken to anyone since around 2011. But I had a few days of funny diabetic blood sugars which can happen due to all sorts of things like say my insulin pump cannula being in wrongly, or me eating a whole ton of cake like a cake pig or also an infection. Its nearly always the cake pig scenario. But I hadn’t had cake so I logged it on the COVID symptoms app what I’ve got on my phone and they said me and anyone I live with over 5 could get a test, so my agent was gutted, what with her being 2 and therefore we’ll just have to assume she’s highly contagious at all times because we just can’t know for sure otherwise. We all got in the car, agent in the back-demanding baby shark on loop and drove to a long queue of cars waiting to go into a car park behind a council building. There was a man in full hazmat directing us in, where we were met by some army dudes in camo, which was unnecessary as I could still see them in the car park, and masks and gloves who gave us a pack of instructions that were 6 pages long and in the wrong order and my wife and I had to balance those on our laps in the car with baby shark on repeat, while trying to swab our own tonsils for 10 seconds without being sick, then sticking the same cotton bud up or noses which was I think, one of the most unpleasant things I’ve ever felt up there and that includes when a fly went up my nose. At least that fly hadn’t already been in my tonsils, our relationship wasn’t that close. Then we had to make sure we didn’t decontaminate it and put it in a jar then give it back to the army man by lobbing it out of the car window into a box. It was all very odd and the closest to a very, very boring zombie film I will ever be. Empty car park, hazmat suits, the army, most people working there looking dead behind the eyes. Then the next day we walked past and the whole thing was gone and the car park was back to normal and I was slightly worried it was a racket and they’d just use my nose DNA to clone me. But no, two days later I got a test saying ‘You don’t have the virus at this time’ which isn’t necessarily true as I might have got it after the test meaning I’d have it while reading the test. ‘At this time’ is a scary few words right? Then it says ‘You can return to work’ as though that’s that then, you haven’t got it yet, may as well try harder. Still no explaining the blood sugars which is sad as I may as well have gone cake pig and at least enjoyed it. But yes, this podcast is coming to you completely COVID free, unless I caught it on Friday, Saturday or Sunday. But if not you definitely won’t catch it via these soundwaves, unless you’ve downloaded this over 5G obvs, then you’re riddled with it.

Have you been tested? For COVID or you know, just for fun? I can’t not recommend it enough. What I can recommend is getting nice messages from lots of you about how much you enjoyed last week’s podcast, thanks tons for that and big thanks tons to Swoop, Stef, Ben, Anonymous, Joe H, Somebody and Baldie for donating to the ko-fi. And also a sorry to Baldie as I know it’s clearly your nickname but replying on ko-fi with ‘thanks Baldie’ still feels rude. If you would like to support this show or just the fact that live comedy won’t be happening until the 22^nd century – although Italy are re-opening theatres in July, but I guess they love their tragedies – then please give us a pound or two to the ko-fi.com/parpolbro site where you can do one-off or monthly nice things, or join the patreon.com/parpolbro which keeps promising that one day it’ll be in pounds not US dollars but I don’t believe it. I still haven’t added any extra stuff if you join either because I am tired but one day I will and you’ll think ‘wow was that it? I preferred it when there were no bonuses’. But I’ll wait until everything else is less disappointing and you miss feeling let down. Obvs if you can’t donate then please give this show a review on Apple podcasts, Stitcher, castbox or write a message in a bottle but don’t put it in the sea unless you live by one because a) that’s bad for the ocean but also unnecessary travel. This show hasn’t had a nice review since March so fix that please, my ego demands it. And of course just spreading the word always helps.

Not much admin this week. I was on a fun podcast called Lockdown Dads, which is about, yeah, dads during lockdown. Classic. If you are a dad on lockdown or someone who knows a dad or has heard about them in a book or film, have a listen, its much fun. There is a good amount of chat about the host Ian having a cat called Boris. On the same parenting theme I’m doing an online gig on Thursday called No Babysitter Required which is hosted by the science showoff team. It will be comedy for parents by parents or something. I have no idea how you can watch it but you can get tickets to sit in your own chair at home by going to scienceshowoff.org. There’ll be loads more of these sorts of things but they’re all quite last minute so just follow all the socials and I’ll shout about them at some point on there. To be honest I’m thinking about finishing writing my hour show that I was contemplating doing at EdFringe this year, but then obvs couldn’t, and then performing it on my twitch channel. Would you want that? Would you want an hour of me without a guest interviewee? It might be a bit much. But if you’re at all keen let me know though it prob won’t be for a little while yet.

On this week’s show I am speaking to co-chair of Keep Our NHS Public, Dr Tony O’Sullivan and I ask him all about all the shit that’s happened to the NHS and is continuing to happen despite the crisis. Plus, our old friend Brexit Fallout is back. Yes, that thing! Remember that? You thought it had gone away didn’t you but no, still there, lurking in the background, pecking away at the country’s virus destroyed core like an opportunistic battered vulture. It really is like Brexit said ‘I’m going to mess things up’ and the coronavirus came in and said ‘hold my beer that is from many countries you won’t be able to get beer from soon.’ Anyway, I thought I’d bring it up you know, as a nice change. You might even find it soothing.

INTERVIEW WITH TONY AT KEEP OUR NHS PUBLIC

Ok, I have to divulge something with you. I haven’t once gone out and clapped for the NHS at 8pm on a Thursday. I know that is terrible but hear me out. Firstly, and in fact mostly it’s because that’s pretty much my daughter’s bedtime which is a battle and a half as it is, without half the street setting off fireworks like they’ve just liberated the area from a guerrilla army. Secondly, we share a front door with our downstairs neighbour and so if we go out into it, she can’t and vice versa what with social distancing and that and if we both went out at the same time, we’d just be risking pointlessly clogging up the A&E. Not due to Cororavirus but because we could really do damage trying to walk out of the door at the same time. Lastly though, it’s because ever since Boris Johnson, Rishi Sunak and well, the predominantly Tory voting area I live in all decided that a clap would be enough to make up for the lack of PPE, health services being sold off to private contractors and ten years of underfunding that has led us to this situation, I sort of feel like, nah, I love the NHS so much, that I’m not joining in with that thanks. It’s a bit like how on valentine’s day, if you really love someone, you probably tell them all year round so buying a card and chocolates just feels like a frightfully hollow gesture that only ends up benefiting card shops run by someone who thinks pressing the next autofill word button on their phone counts as creative design. And while the Prime Minister is clapping away, his hands like two sweaty uncooked buns flailing into each other, his government has also given big healthcare contracts to companies such as Randox Laboratories, a firm advised by Conservative MP Owen Paterson, a man that was on more than one occasion, outwitted by actual badgers. Randox Laboratories was given a £133m contract to produce testing kits, without any publication of a call for competition, because why have the best suited people for the job when you’ve got a mate who’ll have a go? Firms like Serco and Deloitte were given contracts to carry out testing, even though much of the data from the latter has now completely disappeared, though that company is very skilled at making negative results fail to appear until it’s too late. This is just in COVID19 testing, but there are many more examples across the healthcare system, and with the coronavirus bill allowing the government to override the health and social care act without consultation, you have to wonder is Johnson clapping the NHS to say well done, or giving the obligatory farewell applause before it leaves the stage?

This week I spoke to Dr Tony O’Sullivan, co-chair of Keep Our NHS Public, a long running campaign for a publicly funded, publicly provided and publicly accountable health service, you know, like it should be. Tony is a former consultant paediatrician, and has worked with the campaign since 2015, so I was very pleased when he said he somehow had time to chat with me in the midst of everything else. I asked him all about why private companies are carrying out the testing, what ways the government are quickly changing our NHS for the future during this crisis and just what we should all be doing to fight for a renationalised service. I didn’t tell him that I don’t do the Thursday clapping because it’s sort of a faux pas now isn’t it even though only about half my street do it anymore and one who does also had a bit ‘Vote Conservative’ sign in their window during the election and has been going out constantly despite the lockdown so you know, and they’ve twice put their bins out on the wrong day. So I’m just saying…ahem. Anyway, this was a fascinating chat with Tony and as you’ll hear during it, he recommends a petition to sign, that I’ve popped a link for in the podcast blurb so please do that as soon as you can. Here’s Tony:

INTERVIEW WITH TONY PART 1

And we’ll be back with Tony in a minute but first…

MIDDLE BIT – Brexit Fallout

Yeah, I know right? You remember Brexit yeah? That thing that many were worried about because it was going to make supermarket shelves empty, take away freedom of movement and make travel difficult? Oh, how naïve we were. But while you might assume that Brexit has gone from being the big political sea change to now a small wave crashing up against the coronavirus ravaged shipwreck of Britain, it is still, somewhat unbelievably given the current situation, happening. The third round of Brexit talks is over and June is supposedly the deadline for any progress to happen before the EU gives up and realises it’d have had more fun punching itself in the face for weeks on end. As it stands, the UK is still going to leave the EU completely on December 31^st of this year, even though while it is happening, progress in trade talks really isn’t. The EU has warned that the talks so far have been disappointing and not just because I’m sure that during the Zoom chats, Michael Gove has insisted on changing his background so it looks like he’s hanging out with people he wishes he was friends with & thinks are cool, like Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince or Zig and Zag. Meanwhile on the UK side, Chief Negotiator David Frost, no not that one because he’s dead and this one is just dead inside, has told the cabinet that the country needs to prepare for an Australian style departure which is supposedly his code for a no deal and WTO rules, but it ignores that Australia does have WTO with the EU but has 6 other free trade agreements with other countries and eight more nearly at the end of negotiation. So, it’ll only really be like Australia in that our economy will be turned upside down. I know you’re thinking oh but, with the coronavirus turning our economy upside down that should mean we’ll be the right way up again. No. We’ll be double upside down because we’re stubborn like that and refuse to back down.

Why are talks stalling harder than me after I got in my car the other day for the first time in nearly 2 months? Well the UK reckon the EU is asking far more of it than it does from other countries, other countries like Canada say, that haven’t spent 10 years blaming everything on the EU and don’t share a border with the EU and don’t do all their trade with the EU. One big stumbling block is still fishing regulations. The EU want access to the UK’s fishing waters after Brexit and the UK are saying they want full control, but weirdly the EU having access would likely mean the British fishing industry would get more access and more trade opportunities than if Britain had full control of their waters, which always sounds like an incontinence issue and it is in a way as pretending we’d just automatically get to fish where we liked in the British seas is massively piss taking. At the moment 55% of the English quota is taken by companies based in Iceland, Spain and the Netherlands, whereas Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have a lot less foreign ownership but 85% of what Wales has is owned by just one massive trawler like a total greedy bitch. Once EU rules are lifted, there is nothing to stop further countries buying up the rest of the allocation of quotas meaning British fishing industries actually get even less than before, or we’d have to buy back the quotas which could be quite expensive and legally quite difficult. Another issue is British ex-pats in Europe who the British government say aren’t being given enough time to register to stay in the EU countries they live in, therefore the EU is breaching rules of the agreement. Except the EU is also watching the UK for much the same reason as EU citizens based in the UK for less than 5 years are finding it very hard to access any sort of welfare that they are meant to be entitled too. Michael Gove said there was a major imbalance between the UK and the EU’s approaches, and I suppose it must have thrown him off to hear that they can play us at our own game of petty xenophobia. To be fair, some of the EU demands are also a bit much, for example that the UK are tied to following their workers’ rights regulations, even though, as Number 10 have claimed, we have much higher standards in many areas. Which is true, though whether or not we’ll keep them post Brexit when the government is clamouring for pandemic survivors to build HS2 unpaid in return for flour and toilet roll, is another question entirely.

Those are just a few out of many reasons including the fact that the British government don’t seem to really want a deal, as well as seemingly having no interest in tackling money laundering or putting in measures for international co-operation between law enforcement, both of which are the sort of signs that suggest they’re up to no good. It’s like screaming ‘no I don’t think you should count how many biscuits because what’s the point eh?’ while you mouth is covered in crumbs and you’re wearing the tin as a hat. Then there’s also the fact that the government still think we should be handed everything on a plate, thinks the EU should change its negotiating stance without us changing ours and mostly they’re just hoping absolutely no one’s paying any attention because they’re too busy trying not to die. Civil servants who were working full time on coronavirus planning have now been moved back to no deal Brexit planning because why spend time working out where you should have been spending money in order to save lives when you can waste time and money on something that will endanger lives and doesn’t actually have to happen. I do sometimes wonder if the main irritation that this coronavirus is causing many Conservatives is that it’s doing some of the work, they were hoping to get credit for. A no deal, on top of the recession caused by the pandemic, will be devastating and in fact, even 49% of leave voters would prefer there just to be an extended transition period so that we can have some buffer between lockdowns.

A lot of people are calling for a two year extension of the transition period, including the Lib Dems and the SNP, but not Labour as Keir Starmer says Brexit should happen as planned, and either he’s playing smarty pants politics or something, or is hoping things crash down even harder so it’ll be an even easier Labour victory in 5 years-time, assuming there is still an election then and we haven’t turned into a Mad Max style society, with the leader being determined by biggest car and a death match. The EU have said they won’t grant an extension to the transition period because they’re sick enough of us already and have other shit to get on with. Of course, the government are saying there won’t be an extension because if they ask for one, that’d mean them going back on saying they’d got Brexit done and all that, and if there’s one thing we’ve learned about the last 10 years of Conservative rule, it’s that rather than they say ‘oh sorry, my bad, let’s do something sensible now’ they’d rather ride out the wrong till its super wrong and then blame that super wrong very loudly on someone else entirely. Its something I’ve mentioned on here before but the sterotype is that British people say sorry far too much, but this government will never say it about anything. So really those who love their displays of national pride should be pretty angry we’ve got the least British government possible right now and after Johnson proved during the election campaign that he can’t even make a cup of tea properly, there really should be questions about if they know what’s best for us. There are some reports that an extension would cost £378bn more, but the workings out of the Centre for Brexit policy figure seem to against the alternative of a no deal exit where wouldn’t pay any of the so called divorce bill and it doesn’t take into account any of the costs of a no deal Brexit, something that has already cost £6.3bn in preparation alone, let alone deal losses and other fallout. It’s a bit like if said me not paying my rent would save me £1400 a month, yes, my rent is that horrific because I live in stupid, stupid arsehole London and I don’t even have a garden and no they haven’t paused it all despite the pandemic the utter bastards – sorry. But that figure wouldn’t include any legal costs I’d have to pay to try not to get evicted or all the costs I’d need to avoid homelessness, the lack of work I’d be able to do because I wouldn’t have anywhere to live or the sheer time lost that I now have to spend apologising to my wife and daughter that I lost our home just to prove a point on my weekly loss making podcast. The only bit of hope of a no deal not happening is that while the UK government won’t suggest a transition, maybe the EU at the last minute will, meaning Johnson can pretend he’s been forced to accept it and it’s not his loss, while the EU actually win by getting more time to work out how to talk to Michael Gove without retching but lose by having to continue to talk to Michael Gove. They did that with the backstop and saying they couldn’t ditch the backstop then said they could ditch the backstop, so Johnson could pretend he’d done a win, but actually it was only because he had to promise a border in the sea instead which he doesn’t understand and will be more shit.

This pandemic is going to put us in recession, that is inevitable. Johnson is saying that their won’t be public sector pay freezes or more austerity which is good news, but then if he means that, we can’t have a no deal at the end of the year or we’ll just be running on fumes. So, the sensible thing is two more years of goddamn Brexit. If coronavirus peaks again, it may be more. And at some point, you have to wonder if we even need Brexit anymore now that we’ve all seen what it’ll be like when our passports mean fuck all, there are staff shortages in the NHS and frontline staff everywhere, all the way to fruit and veg pickers, and that fucking Wetherspoons twat with a face like a climbing wall that someone fucked features onto Tim Martin is on TV all the time making things worse. If this was a teaser trailer, you’d never go see the film would you? So maybs time for a rethink on Brexit everyone, as coronavirus has arrived from abroad and taken its job. Oh the irony.

And now back to Tony…

INTERVIEW WITH TONY PART 2

Thanks, so much to Dr Tony O’Sullivan for having time to chat with me. You can find Tony on Twitter @DrTonyOSullivan and Keep Our NHS Public can be found at keepournhspublic.com or on Twitter @keepnhspublic. I’ve put a link in the pod blurb to the petition that Tony mentions too, so please do sign and share that if you can.

Who else to talk to right now in these odd and both worrying but also somehow boring times? Lemme know your ideas for people to interview or subjects to interview people about and you can do that by dropping me a line @parpolbro on Twitter, the Partly Political Broadcast facebook group, the contact page at partlypoliticalbroadcast.co.uk or email me at partlypoliticalbroadcast@gmail.com. Or you could get in touch via one of the 6 million zoom call meetings we have to have every week now as your face pops up Brady Bunch style, invasively able to see everything about my flat meaning I’ve had to put some effort into vaguely tidying things as apparently its distracting if there’s a mould mosaic in the background that warps and undulates while we talk and you can blab away completely unaware that I have mastered the art of staring at the camera and nodding my head while actually checking twitter at the same time. So, no I won’t hear it and no, I’m still not wearing any trousers. Or pants. 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 and once again, you absolute champions of listening time have made it all the way to the end of the show, and so, here is your reward. Yes, another golden classic hot politics gossip fact that is definitely true. This week as the Daily Mail attempt to smear Labour Leader Keir Starmer with some really nothing story about him buying his mum some land in the 90s to keep donkeys on it, I thought I’d regale you about the most pointless political smear of all time. No, it’s not when then Labour Leader and man who always looks like he spends most of his energy not tripping over his own feet Ed Miliband was criticised for having two kitchens. I mean, that is clearly the room he’d lurk in at any party so makes sense for him to have two. Instead it is way back in 1875 when Prime Minister Benjamin Disreali, a man who had a face that always said ‘I will review art but only in a negative way’ was accused of not really having a beard by the Buttcombe Chronicle and instead it said he had a small hamster living on his chin that whispered ultrasonic secret messages to him at night. Disreali didn’t even respond to the accusations but how else do you explain his famous quote ‘the secret of success in life is for a man to keep large amounts of food in his cheeks for slow consumption over several hours.’ Exactly. WOWZERS WHAT A HOT POL GOSS FACT THAT WAS. Bet you’ve never heard that before and its definitely true in the sort of not at all true way that sometimes truth is. Anyway, if you enjoyed that or hated it so much that it made you go out of your way to do something useful like save the bees or not push someone over then please do give this podcast a nice review on your podcast apps what you use, tell everyone you know to tune in and gizz it a listen and donate a pound or two to the ko-fi or patreon pleeeaaasseee.

Big time chunky thanks yeah to Acast for hosting the show, The Last Skeptik for the musics, Kat Day for typing up all the linear liner notes each week and Mushybees for art brilliance.

This will be back next week when the government will decide the R is down because they’re now using a lower case one regardless of numbers and they loosen restrictions so that you can high five strangers, share chewing gum with people you don’t know at the bus stop and gently stroke elderly people’s hair, but don’t see family as that’s not sensible.

BYEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

This week’s show was sponsored by Gavin Williamson’s Back To School kit containing absolutely nothing but blind optimism and a reminder that science lessons won’t be necessary this term.

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