Throwing Caution Into 70mph Winds – The Queen’s Covid duty, Putin’s divorced dad speech and pretending Covid has gone away now

Released on Tuesday, February 22nd, 2022.

Throwing Caution Into 70mph Winds – The Queen’s Covid duty, Putin’s divorced dad speech and pretending Covid has gone away now

It’s a week of crap parenting as the Queen bails out her big nonce son, Putin wants custody back of Ukraine and Boris Johnson is keen to turn a blind eye to Covid breeding wherever it can. Meanwhile, big bloody storms. A short interview free episode of gags on the political mayhem of last week.

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THIS EPISODE IS TAGGED WITH: • Boris Johnson, Brexit, Comedy, Conservatives, Kat Day, Labour, NHS, parliament, parpolbro, Partly Political Broadcast, Patreon, podcast, political, politics, Priti Patel, Putin, Russia, satire, self isolation, The Last Skeptik, Tiernan Douieb, Ukraine

Transcript

Ep262

Hello and welcome to the Partly Political Broadcast, the comedy politics podcast that refuses to learn to live with Covid until it pays its fair share of rent and bills. I’m Tiernan Douieb and this week as Prime Minister and what happens when a gale force wind collapses a porridge factory Boris Johnson says an invasion of Ukraine by Russia would bring about the destruction of a democratic state, I ask, does that mean it’d be more like the UK then?

As if everyone’s favourite anaemic Yoda the Queen hasn’t done enough for the British public in her almost unnecessarily long life, what with her occupying a big palace that’d be a real effort for the rest of us to live in because can you imagine how long it takes to hoover? And then there’s being the face on all the stamps which I wouldn’t want to do, as I’m embarrassed enough about my passport pics, and no one’s seen those for years let alone tried to use it to send air mail. Even with all that, the past week the Queen has excelled herself yet again. Firstly, by using her own money, that we gave her for free but is also definitely hers, to let her walking kidney stone of a son Prince Andrew pay £12m in an out of court settlement to prove indefinitely that he’d never met or abused Virginia Giuffre. Not only does that prove his innocence better than any actual evidence, a court trial or somehow that photograph of him with the accuser that has been circulating for years somehow turning out to be a magic eye where if you look closely, it’s just Andrew not sweating in a Pizza Express. But also, by giving her son the dosh like that, the Queen is saving the very fabric of British society, by rescuing two things that are vital to the existence of tabloid newspapers. That’s right, Royalty and nonces. Where would the Royals be without the newspapers? Well, with an extra princess that people actually liked. But apart from that, nowhere really, so it’s only right that the Queen continues to feed their ever hungry news mouths like an informant raisin. Can you imagine if the Queen had let Andrew go to prison and then he’d have definitely offed himself like former associate of king pedo Jeffrey Epstein, Jean Luc Brunel who was a cross between Michael Portillo and a freshly dug up corpse. He was found hung in his cell while facing charges of rape and trafficking, but what’s impressive is despite being imprisoned he managed to turn off all the CCTV and distract the guards from looking while he did it you know, in-case they intervened and ruined his tribute to his friend Jeffrey. So thoughtful. It’s not just the Queen’s kind gesture to her son that we should all be grateful for though, but also how she then went and showed how actually she is just like us if we had obscene amounts of money and thrived on an archaic system built on brutality, by getting Covid. We’re basically the same as her maj right? The Queen getting Covid firstly shows that she isn’t a racist as she does accept some foreign bodies into the royal family, just not ones that are black and married to her grandson. Such a shame Harry had to do that. Why couldn’t he have respected the family and married a paedophile instead? Awful.

And of course, now the Queen has Covid, that means its proper mainstream. The Queen is living with it and even still working from home as every hard working 95 year old should do when ill with a respiratory virus. No idea what her Maj is doing but they’re classed as light duties like, so I guess its, er, telling someone else to turn the lights on or off. She’s just like us except for having the best healthcare in the world and rooms big enough to self-isolate in just by making all your staff stand at the other end. That’s why the Prime Minister has said it is time to scrap all remaining Covid restrictions because I mean the bloody Queen has it, so what’s the fuss all about? If you haven’t had it by now, do you even love Britain? If you’re not out there trying your best to inhale Omicron right into your lungs for the Queen, then I wouldn’t be surprised if the Home Office track you down and send you to one of those weird countries where everyone still cares and barely anyone has been sick. We all have to learn to live with it. Unless you’ve died from it, obviously but then why can’t you follow simple instructions? I mean the Queen’s managed it, so bit bloody selfish of you to not even try to be honest. Boris Johnson says we have to get confident to get back to normal from covid, because with King’s College figures suggesting there’s 165k new cases a day, and 2.5m people currently infected it’s basically gone right? 2.5m people? I mean that’s barely enough people to fill a moon. And of course this latest strain is super mild and only killing around 100 people a day, so you know, less dangerous than the flu if the flu was more dangerous and all year round. I do hope that we all start to be more confident and in future refer to any situation where only 100 or so people die as ‘mild’. Oh that terrorist incident, yeah not sure why you’re upset about that, it only killed 89 people so it was basically no worse than a common cold. Serial killer? Nah, they only murdered 47 people, 15 of which were vulnerable so would’ve died anyway. They’re basically just hayfever in a hat.

The Prime Minister says the end of the restrictions will return’s people’s freedom. Unless you’re clinically vulnerable obvs, in which case you’ll be even less free than before but why oh why should people have to wear really easy to wear masks on a train just so you can actually have a life and do stuff? Come on now. We had the Paralympics in London in 2012, so haven’t you lot had enough already? Yeesh. We see your freedom possibilities and raise you being able to sneeze globules across several carriages which is proper democracy, right there. No need to self-isolate if you Covid anymore either, because frankly if you do that’s just selfish and refusing to share it. It is not good for the economy if you take time off work because you’re actually very ill, and what the economy really needs is for everyone to be really very ill so they all sit at their desks doing nothing and feeling like their head is trying to run off and join Easter Island. That’s where real productivity lies. I definitely think I do my best work when I feel too shit to do any work and can’t actually do any. What will make it easier is that there’ll be such reduced access to tests because we can’t keep giving out free tests says the PM. And he’s right? Free tests for an illness on the NHS? What on earth do you think the health service is for? I mean, really. You don’t free pregnancy tests either and really if you’ve got covid it’s your own fault for not wearing protection.

So, you won’t actually know if you’ve got it or not, so if you suddenly feel awful there’s every chance it’s just you being crap at life. Maybe have some orange juice or something yeah? If the figures say there’s no covid just because no ones testing for it, then they can’t be wrong, right? And I think a handy way to reduce waiting times in the NHS would be if we all stopped testing for everything that anyone could have and before you know it, we’ll have the healthiest country in the world. Maybe we could also stop recording road accidents and breaches of building regulations too and that way we’ll definitely have the safest country in the world. In fact maybe we should also stop recording deaths so then we’ll all definitely be immortal. Chief medical officer and Bruni from Frozen 2 Chris Whitty says Omicron’s impact on mortality is muted, which is ridiculous because its been two years now, everyone should know how to use zoom. He said hospital numbers are still significant, but falling which is probably due to the lack of beds as its hard to stand up if you can’t breathe. Over 75s will get an additional booster jab in the Spring because they really need them to vote Conservative in the May local elections.

There is some concern that the Prime Minister hasn’t followed the science with these announcements but that’s probably because from experience, he’s found that scientists rarely lead him to parties so it’s really not worth it. Johnson insists though, he’s not throwing caution to the wind, which is good because with Storm Eunice and Storm Franklyn this past weekend that’d mean caution was blown fucking miles away. With Met Office Red Warnings, the storms caused flooding across the UK with homes evacuated in South Manchester, there are 10,000 homes without power and severe transport disruption. So it’s been really comforting for everyone in Britain to have some normal news for once. Luckily the Environment Agency has been protecting thousands of people from flood damage, but only in the South and West of England because let’s face it, a lack in investment in transport means no one can get to the North anyway so at least this means it’ll be more accessible by boat. 60% of the Flood Defence budget is spent on the South-East, and a third of England’s vital flood defences are owned by private companies who haven’t bothered to repair more than 1000 of the ones they’re in charge of. I guess that’s because it’s not profitable to keep having overflow on your budget. The government did have an emergency Cobra meeting in the midst of Storm Eunice on Friday to discuss it but its conclusions weren’t reported so it might’ve just been to huddle round a heater for a bit and keep saying ‘ooh it a bit blowy isn’t it?’ I’m guessing that because there were only four deaths reported around the UK that the government considered the storms to be mild. Maybe if we just stopped recording storms then we wouldn’t have to worry about them in the first place?

While they aren’t concerned about a pandemic or Roland Emmerich film reenactments, what the UK government are very concerned about is Ukraine, warning that Russia’s plan to invade has already begun. Just you know, without the invading bit yet. Not sure which bit of the plan they’ve begun but maybe it’s the filling up on snacks before they get going or laying out enough socks and pants for the duration. It is looking quite scary though with Russian President and amateur artist’s impression of what a missing baby looks like 60 years later Vladimir Putin making a big speech that basically said in his view Ukraine isn’t a state, which to try and be optimistic, if its not a state then maybe he won’t be able to send any troops over the border as they won’t have a clue when they’re in the country or not. Putin said modern Ukraine was created by Russia, and then complained it has never had a consistent tradition of being an independent nation. Yes, that’ll be because of Russia constantly invading it. Putin appears to be asking for the Ukrainian regions of Donetsk and Luhansk to be recognised as independent, which would break the Minsk agreement and could allow Russia to invade Ukraine under the idea that it’d become a threat to them. It’s very much a playground tactic where you take someone’s lunch then when they get it back you punch them and say they started it. But actually that’s unfair as most of Putin’s speech sounded more like an angry divorced dad. It was all ‘we created them’, ‘they’re being controlled from the outside’, ‘you want de-communisation, I’ll show you what that’s like.’ I do worry we’re days away from him wearing a superhero outfit and climbing something unless they agree he can have Donetsk and Luhansk every third weekend of the month. It does very much sound like he’s an overbearing parent but at the same time, his kid almost certainly needs to be taken into care and as far away from him as possible.

Boris Johnson says Russia are planning the biggest war in Europe since 1945, which could be concerning when you consider the previous Ukraine conflict in 2014, or it might be that the Prime Minister has zero idea of any conflicts since WW2, and so even two people hitting each other with table tennis bats would be the biggest war since then. It’s all very confusing and you have to wonder just how it is that while very few people in the world are sure what will happen next, it’s the British government who couldn’t forsee the consequences of their own Brexit, their own pandemic regulations and whether or not they were actually at a party that are certain they are fully informed. Foreign Secretary and children’s marionette Liz Truss says the UK have stepped up preparations for the worst case scenario, in Ukraine that is, because as proven they have no idea what to do for the worst case scenario in Britain, hence we’re were always in a new one. Truss says they need to make the cost for Russia intolerably high, but with a quarter of Johnson’s cabinet taking £2m from Russia linked donors since he became PM, how much more costly can they make it? I don’t think any of them will fork out more cash for the possibility of lunch with Truss when she’ll spend the whole time on her phone and only eat the instagrammable food. Still on the plus side, at least all that leftover Covid will be wiped out when we all have to stay indoors for the foreseeable future because everything outside is too radioactive.

While they try and work out how to remove Russian forces from Ukraine, here in the UK we seem to have increasingly diminishing possibilities of removing Boris Johnson from office and not just because he strikes me as someone that’s very hard to shift once he’s asleep in a chair. The Prime Minister handed in his survey to the Met Police on Saturday night, but its hard to know if he even managed to spell his name right, let alone fill it in properly. Apparently, he’s been allowed to examine the evidence against him in surveys filled in by Downing Street staff before submitting his, and No.10 have asked the Met don’t release any of the pictures they have been given of the events. I hadn’t realised this is how it works if you’re accused of committing a crime now, and as I’m quite worried I accidently ran a red light a few weeks ago, I’m hoping I’ll just get to fill in a form saying I didn’t actually and ask that all pictures of my car are put in the bin. If its true that no one is above the law in this country, then you have to wonder if Boris Johnson has managed to sink so far beneath the law in his attempts to scrape rock bottom that it just can’t see him anymore. During a BBC interview, the Prime Minister dodged questions 15 times on whether he’d quit if it turns out he’s a big crim but why would he when British people love crims. Like the Krays, or Michael Caine or Robin Hood. He’ll probably just be even more popular as a criminal Prime Minister as it’ll just confirm everyone’s suspicions that the government are indeed a bunch of crooks and isn’t it nice someone is actually honest about it unlike Labour would be. Zippy the Pinhead tribute act and Minister of State for Europe James Cleverly said he didn’t think Johnson should step down if he’s found guilty as he doesn’t reckon what the country needs now is a vacuum at the centre of government. There’s already a moral one isn’t there? And what about the fact that everything the cabinet do absolutely sucks? Maybe rather than pretend the Prime Minister breaking the law isn’t a big deal, they should just stop recording crimes and then everyone will be legal all the time?

In other news, the Home Secretary Priti Patel, a woman who would be rejected by the dark side for being a bit much, has rejected demands to make misogyny a hate crime, probably because it’ll mean that even more of the cabinet get sent questionnaires and they haven’t got time for that. Patel says it would be more harmful than helpful to woman and girls who are victims of violence, as prosecutors would have to prove hate crime had occurred as part of another offence. I mean what Patel could do, is look into changing law so it actually worked better, but I guess that’d be a lot of effort whereas it’s easier letting everyone know that misogyny isn’t a hate crime eh, it’s just a bit of fun negging and if you can’t take it maybe you shouldn’t work in the home office. One thing the home secretary has done though is axe the golden visa scheme which gave wealthy foreign investors a fast track to live in the UK, which after the last few years sounds more like a punishment than a bonus. Patel says it’s part of a crackdown on corrupt elites who threaten our national security and that makes sense as she wouldn’t want them coming over here, taking all the British Tory donors jobs. It’s hard to believe that’ll be it for wealthy foreign investors getting a free pass to be in the UK, as then who else is going to be able to afford to buy homes in London?

Minister without portfolio or any discernable skills and man who definitely got bullied at school, everytime he went to pick up his kids from there Oliver Dowden, gave a speech to the very right-wing US think tank The Heritage Foundation last week. Clearly the only way they could attempt to have a diverse range of speakers was by inviting one person who is basically translucent. Dowden tweeted a picture of his last minute prep, standing by an ironing board with his speech on it in what was probably his hotel room, because you have to do what you can to make shit old material seem newer. His speech was all about how cancel culture is sweeping the west and sapping its confidence. Is that what it is Oliver? Is it cancel culture that means you can’t pee if there’s someone else at the urinals? Funny how cancel culture wasn’t an issue when he was culture secretary and all the arts got cancelled during the pandemic and wasn’t funded properly. According to Dowden woke ideology is now everywhere, which if that’s true means his shit ideas aren’t mainstream because they make no sense and no one likes them.

Deputy Labour Leader and star of Horizon Zero Clue Angela Rayner said that she believes police should shoot terrorists first and ask questions later, which would make the question asking fairly tricky. I mean, just try asking Jean Charles De Menzies. I think Labour are right to go on this super tough on crime stance to counter act the Conservatives just doing crime, and frankly why not just go all out and say actually, its great when the cops kill people and why don’t they just kill everyone and could then conduct a séance to find out who knew what, then if they weren’t guilty they could resurrect them using old voodoo magic and if that goes wrong they could shoot them again. Or just let them vote as being that braindead they’d probably really go for shit awful policies like shoot first, ask questions later.

Lastly, Brexit Opportunities Minister and Opportunistic Grave Digger Jacob Rees Mogg says that evidence that leaving the EU has damaged UK trade is few and far between. Yes, that’s because it’s still stuck in a lorry on the M20. The government are to drop their ban on imports of foie gras and fur because otherwise there are concerns that Rees Mogg will starve and Liz Truss will have nothing to wear during photo shoots. Former Deputy Prime Minister and cardboard cut-out at a printers’ shop Nick Clegg has been promoted to president of global affairs for Meta, presumably because he’s an expert in being virtually there.

And lastly, Captain Sir Tom Moore, the man who became the symbol for how the government have underfunded the NHS so much that a 100-year-old elderly man had to walk around a lot to fund it – take that the Queen with your light duties – until British Airways killed him off by sending him to Barbados to get Covid. A charity set up in his name tried to appoint his daughter as the CEO on a six-figure salary but the Charity Commission blocked it, and then paid companies owned by his daughter and son in law thousands of pounds. Is that what they mean by charity begins at home?

ADMIN

Hey hey hey. Stormy stormy days here in the UK. On Friday I’m certain I saw a man take his dog for a fly. I hope you have got through Storm Eunice and Storm Franklyn and now, what’s the next one? Storm Gladys? Honestly these names do not help. If I hear Eunice, Franklyn and Gladys are coming to town I’m assuming they’re going to do an impromptu big band concert, not knock over fences and kick over everyone’s bins. I think I’ve said it before, but I’ll goddamn say it again, I do not like the humanising of storms. There’s enough bloomin’ other humans we don’t humanise, at least let’s not give storms fancy names. Why can’t we go through the alphabet of swears? Storm Effing, Storm Fucks Sake, Storm Goddamit and so on. Sure, there’ll be letters we might struggle with but it might cause a need to invent new swear words and if there’s one thing that 2022 is in dire need of, it’s that. I might start a government petition. I had one show cancelled last week because it turns out it’s not a good idea to let kids travel in 70mph winds, even though I think they’d get there super quickly if attached to a kite or holding their jacket open.

Just a mini-shouty podcast this week I’m afraid. I did email soooo many people to chat last week, including 17 different people to talk to about Ukraine, but as helper of the pod Kat Day kindly and not at all sarcastly, ahem, pointed out, ‘they might be a bit busy’. Yes I know, I know. But I mean, out of 17, you’d expect one to have been snubbed by everywhere else and ready to talk to an unimportant poorly researched podcast right? I like to think that this show is where you go if you don’t even get the call from GB News. So just that top bit for now. Oh and all the usual thanksies. Ta loads to Conal and Loretta for the ko-fi donations, and also a super late shout out to Anonymous, who I think isn’t the global hacker organisation but you know, someone who didn’t want to give their name, for the donation to the Acast supporter button that you did back in Jan. Basically the wise podcast hosts have now hidden the dashboard for the supporter page so I haven’t been able to find it for ages, which I guess means its now as much of a challenge for me to find it as for you. But look if that’s how you’d like to donate, then go for it, otherwise please do head to the ko-fi.com/parpolbro for a one-off coffee funding, or join the patreon.com/parpolbro to give me regular injections of realising that I can’t stop this show or 1-2 people might be sad.

I can’t remember any other admin this week as all I keep thinking about is how the wind is howling so much outside I feel like someone should check if its ok. Oh, though, I did want to say that I didn’t joke about it because well, its great and I couldn’t think of a gag other than, it’s great, but the Welsh government’s trial roll out of Universal Basic Income for care leavers is so awesome and it was nice after speaking to James Plunkett last week about hopeful initiatives like UBI to suddenly see Wales go, hold my Tiny Rebel kuch. See? It’s not all bad.

Er….so now….

END

And that’s your lot for this week’s Partly Political Broadcast podcast. Just a wee one but hopefully back to usual average height for an audio show by next week. If you like a lot of chocolate on your biscuit then join our club, but if you like this show, then do spread the word about it, donate to the ko-fi or patreon and maybe even give it a nice review on a podcast platform, or train station toilet wall.

Gracious mutterings to Acast, The Last Skeptik and Kat Day.

This will be back next week when Covid announces it doesn’t want to adjust to living with Boris Johnson as the constant ABBA music and parties means it never gets any sleep.

BYEEEEEEEEEE

This week’s show was sponsored by me not knowing or having ever met Prince Andrew, so I’m expecting the £12m patreon donation any day now.