Well done Andy Burnham! At least the prisoners are happy

The Telegraph Hello and welcome to The Weekend Tea with me, Poppy Coburn. And me, Michael Deacon. Michael, I have to ask you, were you in Liverpool last week? No. Funnily enough, you weren't at Labour Party conference? No, I tried to be as far away from that sort of thing as possible. You didn't fancy listening to our new Prime Minister's brilliant speech that everyone has been lauding as the greatest thing since sliced bread. Did I miss out horribly? I think so. Well, I mean, his speech was quite a funny one because everybody said it was very emotional. He spoke about his late father. He's a better speaker than Keir Starmer. Wow. The bar is quite low for that one. I'm not really sure it's the compliment people think they're making when they talk about him. But it was pretty light on content and the content that we were kind of teased to get. As the big, you know, event that was going to happen was the end of the triple lock. Yes. Well, I mean, that is big, isn't it? It's massive. I mean, you know, they're planning to scrap it possibly in 2030 if they get re-elected. And naturally enough, quite a lot of pensioners are very unhappy about that. But I want to say something about this because I think there's even worse to come, OK? Really? Because they won't just stop at scrapping the triple lock because that won't just magically fix the public finances with it. I think there's more to come. The next thing they will push for is means testing the state pension. So I think I. I've heard people suggesting this already. And I think what. Effectively, what will happen is if you work every day of your life and pay national insurance all the way through your life for decades in end, you'll get nothing. You will get nothing back. However, if you don't do a day's work in your life, never pay any national insurance, yeah, you'll get a state pension. So it'll be just for you. That is the future. Yeah, I found the whole thing a little bit unnerving, to be honest with you. Apparently, I'm not alone because the market's also freaking out. So Andy Burnham's big thing is this social care, push he wants to do, a national care service because everyone's looking at the NHS and going, God, that model's so fantastic. I wish we could expand that out to another area of public life. The thing is, it sounds very expensive to do a national care service. It's one of the reasons why politicians have kicked it down the road for many decades now because it's very difficult when you've got an aging population to have a national care service that's free at the point of use. And the way he said he was going to fund it was by doing this end of the triple lock. So I did go to X and I was like, that seems like it's probably not going to work out. It's not. So what they're doing is that they're kicking pensioners, they're going off the triple lock, which is something that I think Labour Party members enjoy, particularly those who falsely believe that by going off to pensioners now it's going to make their situation any better. Trust me, it won't, particularly if you're in work, for a scheme that is definitely going to cost us billions of pounds that is going to necessitate a tax rise, which, funnily enough, he didn't bring up. And then you know what they'll say? They'll say, well, look, our economy is very sluggish. We need growth to fund things like, you know, social care and ending the triple lock. Well, it hasn't actually done it. What we need to do, the only way to get growth back is we've got to rejoin the EU. And that's another thing Andy Burnham was suggesting this week. He was hinting that, you know, it is possible that in the future he could, you know, say we should rejoin the EU. And that interests me, really, because it's the opposite of Andy Burnham's usual message, isn't it? He's always talking about the importance of devolving power to local people. Rejoin the EU. Well, that's the opposite. Did you hear his reasoning for this? It's the exact opposite. His reasoning for this, this is so funny, I thought it was something out of a sketch. Well, I like unions of all forms. That was actually his reasoning for going back into the European Union, for getting closer. He likes unions of all forms. Yeah, I like trade unions. Trade unions, good. And therefore, I like vast super states. You can tell he thought about it. I mean, he's clearly put the work into it. I mean, it's a cutting room floor of all the bad ideas that even Keir Starmer's terrible government was like, oh, we can't do that. We're not that desperate yet. Well, clearly we've got, we've got to that point of total desperation because, as you say, he's not going to do a thing for growth. He doesn't care about growth. He didn't actually mention economic growth at all in this. It's about how can I bung money to people that I like and take money from people I don't, which I suppose you could say is classic Labour party. Well, indeed. But there's one thing, just to say something positively. I know a lot of our readers would be very, very unhappy if our Prime Minister tried to take us back into the EU, but I think there would be one upside for our readers. In the EU, you can't tax education. So basically, if Labour take us back into this, into the EU, they'll have to drop VAT on school fees. So there you go. Let's look on the bright side. It also might help our farmers a little bit. Maybe this is the way we're going to save ourselves. There's Telegraph employees who are coming out now and saying, European Union, please save us from the EU party. There you go. It can't be any worse than the government we currently have. Well, there's another party conference coming up because we're deep in party conference season. Conservative party conference, obviously, will be starting on Sunday and I will be there. Really? I'm doing a bit of a plan. You're one of the star speakers, are you? I can't say I'm a star. But I will be there with the JLUC. We are doing a young conference, young Conservative conference event, which will be at six o'clock on Sunday. So please do join us if you're going to be there. I was immediately asked the question when we were planning this, Poppy, when you were young Conservative, you must have been obviously working at the Telegraph. Now you've got right wing politics. Not quite, guys. Actually, if you do a bit of Googling, you can find out that my politics when I was young were very strident, but not quite correct. I was, I was actually at Corbinite back in the day. Were you really? Yes. Hang on a minute. You've just used the phrase when I was young. You are young now. No, but. How long ago was this? My life is short, so everything feels like it was very long ago. This was 2019, so I was 19 years old. That's practically last week. It feels to me a million years ago, which is quite convenient. Hang on, how old were you in 2019? I was 19. Oh, wow. Yeah, it's really easy to remember my age. I was four years old. That's okay. Yes, I'll explain it. Yeah, I can't say I made the best decisions at the time. You can also see from the clothes that I was wearing that the hats wasn't entirely in my right mind. I used to wear dungarees quite a lot. Right, okay. Well, yeah, I guess that's, you know, uniform for young Corbinistas. Interesting choice. So you were a young Corbinista. So did you have any friends who were young Conservatives or did you used to, did you used to hang out with them? Friends. Friends who were young Conservatives and I absolutely not. I was pretty appalling towards them, I think. What did you do? Well, I usually just point and laugh at them. You know, that was, that was usually enough. But you're a bully. You were bullying young Conservatives. Completely. I'm sorry about that. And now, at the weekend, you're going to be hanging out with them. They're going to get revenge on you. Because the first question I'm sure someone's going to ask me is, well, you know, when you were young Poppy, when you were a young lady, who did you vote? And I'm going to have to say Jeremy Corbyn and then they're all going to come and attack me and then they're going to say you're a Conservative now. I'm going to go like, oh, I'm not talking about who I'm voting now. I can't believe you've admitted this in public. Your secret shame. Well, I have to be completely honest because it is out there. I mean, just wait until you find out what I was doing with Extinction Rebellion and then you really will lose your head. Oh my God. At least, hey, Michael, at least I wasn't dressing up as a woman. Eh? That was you. Oh, right. I was thinking, I was thinking, I'm sure you were dressing as a woman. Well, I think I passed. I mean, you're dressing as a woman now. I think I passed fantastically, don't you? OK, well, more political news. Not particularly pleasant this week. The early release prison scheme is finally coming to fruition. It's been the week that people have started to be let out en masse. You can see that people aren't particularly happy about it, including some of the prisoners. I did see one photo that a photographer managed to get of a guy holding a plastic bag over his head, which you think is quite a good way of not identifying yourself. Apart from, and this is quite a major problem, it was a clear plastic bag. So you could kind of see his head. You'd also cut a breathing hole into it. So he just, like he was doing a really crap Halloween costume. Right. Basically, but anyway, these people are now walking off streets again. And there's one fantastic video where you can see one of the prisoners has recently released and this is posted on the ex-account of the Shadow Justice Secretary, Nick Timothy, thanking Andy Burnham for letting him out of prison. Do you have a message for the Prime Minister, Andy Burnham? Yeah, stop, stop, stop sending people to prison in the first place. People don't need to go help them before they get there. It's not, you should stop, stop thinking about your money and think about people's health. Like I'm 50, I've been in and out of jail all my life. I've been in jail 300, 300, I've been in jail, I've got 360 convictions. It's help I need. I've got an addiction to stealing. Yeah, this doesn't help me. I'm going to have to go. What are you going to do now? What's your plan? I don't know, I'm going to go stealing again. I'm going to go stealing so I'm going to end up back in because they haven't helped me this time. What are you going to steal? Whatever I get, whatever I get. It's pretty on the nose there. Thanks, mate. Thanks for letting me go. I mean, and then he's just going to go off and commit another crime immediately afterwards. Well, yeah, I mean, exactly. You had a prisoner talking to journalists. Journalists ask, you know, so what are you going to do now you've been released? And he just openly says, I'm going to go and start stealing again. I mean, quite openly and the reporters are a bit bemused by this and they then ask, what are you going to steal? Like, and I thought, I was like waiting for the follow-up questions. Where are you going to steal it from? What day? What time? Just so we can pass on to the police. It would save them a bit of bother, you know, with arresting you and putting you back in prison again. So, yes, it was quite extraordinary. I suppose with our criminal justice system being what it is, I mean, you may as well just be honest. You may as well just tell the truth. It's not like there's actually any consequences for you stealing. You get your bed and board, get to enjoy some food. I guess you get to indulge in drugs as well because they are completely right throughout prison. You probably have quite a fun time when you're back on the streets again. Well, there you go. Since we're on the subject of criminals and police chaos, what on earth is going on at RAF Fairford? Now, I don't suppose you know the answer because nobody seems to, but I mean, I don't even know what we can say about it, what was happening there with the arrest of these possible terror suspects and then releasing them on bail and then who knows what they were up to or what they're alleged of that we don't know elements to this story so i remember waking up in the morning that um because it happened in the early hours last weekend and waking up and going oh god that looks like it's pretty serious you know it was air base that was used by the americans so carrying out the iran war so you immediately think is it iranian state actors it's a serious terror thought we start to get more details coming through that they might potentially be making bombs and then there was a really fantastic bit of news which was apparently they were discovered by a person who was coming back from a party he was driving through the countryside he suddenly just saw a group of what they described as middle eastern men just running out of these white vans you know into into the undergrowth and and they immediately called the police and that was apparently part of the reason why they were caught and then we got a contradictory bit of information that these people were apparently discovered by one of the masterminds alleged masterminds in this case calling the police on themselves i said i can't make a head or tail of any of this it doesn't make any sense sorry this is four lions this is just the plot of the film isn't it yeah a fantastic film you know i love that scene where they're in the van on the way into london and they're just singing dancing in the moonlight imagine that was how maybe that's how they were caught they were just blasting music out their white van on the way to potentially blow up raf yeah i mean it's not often you get many uh comedy films about islamic terrorism but if anyone's not seen it yeah four lines by chris morrison's released 2010 do what do watch it if you can i'll tell you one of the things that i think is really interesting is that there's a lot of other thing that i find totally baffling about this story which is that as i mentioned earlier okay they they released the suspects after 24 hours on bail and i thought well that's a bit odd but also because here's another story from this week on tuesday bbc anti-migrant activist daniel thomas also known as danny tomo has been refused bail during a crown court hearing over the alleged slashing of a dinghy in the english channel now hang on a minute you can be released on bail if you're suspected of terrorist activity however if you are alleged to have damaged some property belonging to a people smuggling gang no there's no bail for you no you're too dangerous no you're staying here sunshine yeah so if you again can you explain that just to explain that again so if you slash a boat in the english channel of someone who's currently in the process of committing a crime you are a dangerous threat to british national security because you're trying to stop people smuggling okay and if you are potentially trying to blow up an airbase that's fine and you're not going to be able to do that because you're not going to be able to do that like that's okay you've got a good legal case well how about you go uh you know go puddling around the countryside you know take in some of the scenery and like maybe we'll come back to you and charge you with a crime i suppose i'm tying into the prison release story they're going to go to prison for potentially trying to blow up this airbase and they'll be out within a couple of months you know someone will be interviewing them what you up to do next i'm going to blow up a plane why don't we move on to a story that at least makes some sense to me i don't think it's going to make any sense to you because it's about football and this is all about manchester city do you know anything about this shall i provide a brief explanation you're gonna have to find a complete explanation as far as i can tell there was something to do this week with manchester andy burnham bottle caps maybe there are other football related stories this is how little football comes okay right basically manchester city are a team that used to be very very unsuccessful and then in the past couple of years they've been a little bit more successful decades they got taken over by some rich people and they started winning lots and lots of trophies but then there were allegations that they might have been up to some financial jiggery pokery cheating basically um and finally after about three years of investigations an independent panel um has ruled that they are guilty of cheating now man city are protesting their innocence they say they're going to appeal but uh it looks like they could face some very very serious punishment if they are found guilty i mean they could be expelled from the premier league relegated down goodness knows how many divisions we don't know yet but it's very very serious basically um so you know if you're someone who plays sunday league football i mean look out you might be playing man city next weekend you never know we don't know how we don't know how mill will suddenly have like a fantastic you know football match against we we don't know what's going to happen to them um their former manager pet guardiola who was manager for much of this time um he's released a statement uh saying to his old club i'll always be behind you now i don't know if he means behind you in the queue for the prison canteen but anyway there you go he's released no other comment on this hang on what is this cheating scandal because i imagine you can't just pay off the referees they like no there's no not not bribery but sort of um just fiddling with the books uh to enable them to uh spend more money than they should have been spending anyway it's oh so they want to spend even more money on footballers than they can well there are lots of restrictions on how much you can spend relating to do you know what it's even talking about this is starting to bore me i mean i mean i actually like football but anyway basically they've been let's move on to something much more salacious michael let's move on to something much more salacious i love this story of the lady in tennessee who's been on death row for now i think it's 30 years or so for committing a horrific crime when she was 18 yes murder desperation of a body awful awful um so obviously she's on death row the whole point of death row is that you're about to die right yes she's in for a lethal injection yes lethal again point in the word they somehow managed to botch this lethal injection so what they do is they rush her to a hospital can you explain this to me michael so they botch a lethal injection botching a lethal injection as the name would imply means that you're still alive isn't the whole point that you want to kill this person well yeah i mean essentially one moment the state is trying to kill her the next moment it's trying to it's trying to save her life and it's quite confusing but then i think well what happens next what's the plan if you succeed in saving her life are you going to reschedule her execution so essentially you are saving her life so that you can kill her yeah it's it's like something out of a joseph heller novel you know catch 22 or something like that kind of sort of hideous black humor isn't it and yet it is real there's quite a bizarre thing that's going on with the u.s with these injections so lots of people who don't agree with the death penalty they're trying to deal in any way they can with the death penalty they possibly can to make it more difficult to execute people so they go after the pharmaceutical companies that make the chemicals that are put in the lethal injections they launch all these appeals i mean she's been on death row for decades now they tried to make it impossible so there was a last minute injunction that they tried to stop it on the grounds that she was abused as a child which is like that's a very long time ago so not really relevant so they went ahead with it anyway even though it didn't work but what is bizarre is that you're not actually allowed to pick how you're going to be executed anymore because they have these very strange restrictions so a lot of it is being done on the state level even if you would put in your own request so this lady apparently has become a buddhist not quite in keeping with her kind of whole i'm a murderer thing i think the first rule of buddhism is that you don't harm other people but there you go she's a late to life convert and she wanted an all-female firing squad feminism what a blow for equal rights couldn't you have given it to her i mean the only way they could have messed that one up is if you miss and then you all you have to do is reload i mean it was certainly a blow for equal rights but i think it's a blow for equal rights you said that the problem was sending her to a hospital i'm very impressed by how much you know about it it's like it's like we've sort of morphed into a true crime podcast well those are very very popular maybe we should very very popular and also i have to say for my demographic for young women we're obsessed with true crime it's it's a terrible terrible why is that i think it's got something to do with it at the back of your head you like scaring yourself so it's like people who like to go see horror movies right i love watching true crime stuff because usually the victim would be like you know it was a young woman with middle parted hair and i'm like that's me that's me i mean what are the people that he would have killed and it's like there's some weird psychological thing going on where you you're kind of scared by it but you're also fascinated by it it's completely massive men always find this absolutely incomprehensible i do i'm incredibly weird but anyway perhaps we should talk about something slightly lighter um celebrity traitors yes that's the potter show on tv that's just launched uh this week and i don't know if you're a fan were you watching you know what i usually don't watch television but i do actually quite like the traitors because it's such a phenomenon you have to you have to keep up with it um i very much liked alan carr last season just being what i thought was the worst trait i didn't think you could get a worse traitor than he was he was getting into giggles someone said like are you a traitor and he'd be like oh i'm just nervous i'm just nervous but we seem to actually have had an even worse traitor this time around unless it's some fantastic scheme from richard grant richard e grant yeah he is you know the with an eye actor um he's a fabulous actor so he he seems only in episode one he seems to have given away the fact that he's a traitor and he's a traitor and he's a traitor the fact that he was a traitor which is of course not what you are supposed to do what are you traitor you're what traitor he's a traitor are you yeah right what's the point of being in the game if you're not you know right yeah okay he's been sort of acting as though it's uh it was a gaffe whoops i didn't mean to do that how are we going to cover this up i think he did it on purpose i think you're right i mean he's a very clever actor the man also he's an actor he's an award-winning actor he he can act doing something silly and making fun of himself but i think there's a deliberate attempt to actually steal the show which he has done because that's all anyone's talking about i completely agree with you i think it's a fake out i think it's a very very clip because when he actually gets on the circuit if someone says oh you're a traitor it's because like do you think i'm that stupid do you think i'm actually that stupid i just confessed to you that i'm a traitor on day one i think he's got a good chance of winning there you well yeah yeah we shall see we shall see there you go we'll all be watching i'm sure Well, this is a story that I know that would have um irritated you michael because it's got all the classic features of labor idiocy so we're going back to labor party conference and a fringe event and i think a lot of labor party politicians they kind of relax when they go to a fringe event they're like no one's here everyone's on the main stage watching andy burnham do a speech or listening to john healy try and convince the country we've still got cash um so they can just they can just be who they really are they can say what they really think about the country that they presume to govern and one such mp decided to go on a bizarre rant about far-right fantasies of pubs with with warm beer and black labradors could you can you explain what this bizarre far-right fantasy actually is michael no i absolutely can't i do not i i cannot for the life of me understand how having a pint in a country pub with a black labrador at your feet is is it's far right or something like i don't obviously everyone anyway everyone's been joking about it and saying black labs matter and all the rest of it what really puzzles me is that why she specifically mentioned black labrador surely a black labrador can't be a white supremacist i mean if anything a black supremacist it's the white labradors you want to watch out for you know they're the ones protesting in portsmouth and bursting dinghies and things like that so you know watch out for them but funnily enough i i do say it is perhaps possible for a dog to be racist and i'm going to explain why i don't know if you're a fan of kirby enthusiasm the british the brilliant british american the brilliant sitcom by larry david anyway there is an episode of it in which larry goes to the pound and adopts a dog uh it's not a black labrador i think it's a german shepherd but anyway uh you know he's walking around introducing his friends and one of his friends uh who is a black woman says that dog is racist so that dog every time it sees me it it barks at me it growls at me really aggressively and yet with white people oh it's always very friendly with them i think your dogs are racist and larry's go my dog's a racist um can it be anyway at the end of the episode there's a bit what larry finds out is his dog is not racist it's homophobic it was barking at her not because she's black because she's a lesbian there you go see there's the problem i mean what do you do in that situation i suppose if you're a labour party and you just put the dog down you know for being too offensive that's it what are you just questioning the dog at a pound it's just like what do you think about trade unions what do you think about the european union you know would you pray would you take us back in nigel farage and you're just waiting for it to start growling just what just wait i think they're going to rule that uh black labradors are a breed of dangerous dog yes not because of them biting people but because they just have very right-wing views so bully xl's just misunderstood okay they just need a bit of total love and care uh they need community centers they just need a bit more investment into their well-being but black labradors are disgusting fascists and need to be put in jail i think that's that's it well we've solved it there you go well i hope there's time for me to raise one more story with you probably because uh i've got a very important announcement to make here now apparently um the organizers of the mr england contest which basically a sort of male beauty contest they're looking for the you know the hunk of the year okay they do there is such a thing that they're very worried because they've not had enough entries this year they're worried that we are facing a nationwide hunk shortage so they're appealing for entry so i thought it's time for me to to step up and do my patriotic duty i'm gonna put myself forward for hunk of the year i'm gonna be mr england i can see you're laughing at this as if you think that i'm not a suitable candidate as if you think i'm not in peak physical condition but i can tell you that i actually have quite considerable experience of modeling male modeling i do in fact i can tell you this is a genuine fact okay i am probably the only man in britain who has both appeared topless in the sun and naked in a lads mag that is genuinely true now there's plenty of women who can who can say that but not many men you're gonna have to give me a bit of my context now i know what you're talking about for the lads mag but please tell me page three girl michael yes well okay it wasn't actually on page three this happened okay this happened this happened 20 years ago when i was briefly a feature writer at the sun before i came here um and there's some scientific researcher had been doing a study to show that some people can be thin on the outside but fat on the inside in other words they've got lots of fat around their internal organs even though they're outwardly slim now at that time i was quite a lot slimmer than i am now um so they sent me along uh to have a scan and i they had a body scan x-rayed me and everything like that and they found out that indeed i was someone who was thin on the outside and fat on the inside and so in the sun they published two photos big photos one of me just in a pair of boxer shorts nothing else so topless oh wow and then they show the x-rays of my disgusting fatty organs so there you are i have been topless but i do want to say that i am no longer um thin on the outside but fat on the inside because i'm now fat on the outside as well so therefore at least i'm being consistent well now you should do you have to you have to go back by the way you're gonna have to do another photo shoot so you can say that this is what happens when you don't deal with your visceral body fat i have done an awful lot of embarrassing things in my career but i think i'm going to draw the line there well on that titillating image that's all from us i'll see you again next week you you