Friday Night Comedy from BBC Radio 4 - The News Quiz - 10th March

Episode Date: April 7, 2023

Andy Zaltzman quizzes the week's news.

This is the BBC. This podcast is supported by advertising outside the UK. BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Due to BBC cuts to classical music, our regular 80-person brass band is no longer available to perform the News Quiz theme live, as they usually do. I will therefore be performing the theme tune myself this week, using a pan and a wooden spoon skim over the sheet music yep right here we go right that'll do uh welcome to the news quiz

the last news quiz of the current series. I'm Andy Zaltzman and I have scored zero international goals, which means I think I'm allowed to say whatever I want. Our teams this week, we have Team Echo Chamber against Team Echo Chamber. Rivalry as old as the internet itself. On Team Echo Chamber, we have Andy Hamilton and the deputy political editor of ITV News, Anushka Astana.

ITV, we can all learn to get along. And taking on Andy and Anushka, Chris McCausland and Ria Lina. As usual, we start with the biggest news story of the week. Oh, my goodness, Andy, I can't believe we're starting with Liverpool beating Manchester United 7-0. I mean... Surely that's the biggest story of the week? Hit me with it.

Well, football and news should never mix. Our first question can go to Andy and Anushka. And, oh, good, it looks like a good news story to get us started. The government pledged this week to stop... Oh, sorry, I should have run ahead. The government pledged this week... ..to stop what? Stop the boats. Correct.

Because all slogans have to be three words an hour, so it's stop the boats. It's short, snappy, illegal, probably, but never mind. And Rishi Sunak has launched this new policy and it all hinges around the notion of deterrence. And to be fair to the government, God knows they have done their level best to deter the migrants. They have made this country the most hideously unattractive destination possible.

They've tanked the economy. You know, they've demolished public services. They've paralysed the transport system. And still, boats keep coming. Yeah, and it still keep coming. And I presume the government are going to persevere because there will come a tipping point, won't there, when eventually, if things get bad enough,

the smugglers will work out that they'll get more money for smuggling people out of the UK than smuggling men. In theory, Rishi Sunak wants to get on top of the problem of the boats with migrants coming across. I think, ultimately, it might not be about that for them because it's going to be very hard for them to enact this policy. They don't seem to have thought through much of the detail.

I suspect that, for them, it's a win if they can just say that they tried to enact the policy and it was thwarted by this cabal of liberal lefty lawyers and civil servants and BBC sports presenters. Because the local elections are coming. I think they focus group this issue, it's played well. I think maybe they feel that it's a win-win for them. They can bang that drum.

But interestingly, they've gone for the wrong sports presenter. Gary Lineker's a decoy. It's actually Hazel Irvine that runs the country. Anushka, as Andy said, the politics of this seem to go beyond the policy of it. How do you see how it's likely to play out? I agree that

right now they love having a fight with the blob, as they call it, the lefties, including Gary. But I think ultimately, if they're love having a fight with the blob as they call it the lefties including Gary but I think ultimately if they're still having a fight with them by the next election it's a problem for him I think he's now set his stall on I am going to stop the boats and if he can't do that I think it's going to be a very big problem I think the issue he's got on this is that it clearly does poll very well in his red wall seats across some parts of the North and Midlands. But, you know, you speak to Liberal Democrats,

they're cock-a-hoop because, I mean, not about the policy. They don't like the policy. But they are cock-a-hoop about how badly it's going down in some of the more Liberal-facing Conservative seats. Well, on that, we have our next question for Chris and Ria. This new illegal migration bill... Where's the pause supposed to be? Is there supposed to be a pause in there? Is it illegal migration?

But this bill is more than 50% likely to break what? The Daily Mail website. Any suggestion, Chris? It's going to be, it's the law, isn't it? But it does need fixing. It does need solving. It seems that people are either insensitive to the issue or naive to the issue. And there's like some middle ground that needs to be found, really, isn't there? A middle ground, do you mean like an island in the middle of the channel? The Isle of Wight, yeah. I mean, maybe we could just let anyone in that wants to come in, but just so long as they bring some hard-to-get vegetables with them. You can imagine them down there.

What have you got, tomatoes? Welcome! Next, what have you got, turnips? No, we've got them coming out of our ears. So what's your plan to solve the global migration crisis? I've got a couple. OK. You don't actually need complicated legislation

to reduce the numbers of refugees who are successfully arriving here. We could just replace the people traffickers with whoever used to work for Hermes. Can I just ask, where are we going to put all these people? I mean, I know there's a couple of dilapidated, abandoned RAF stations that they're going to reopen, but after that... She says we're not going to need anywhere

because no-one's going to come. I'm actually not joking, that's what she said. If you don't build it, they won't come. They did have one idea, which was to put people in butlins. But I noticed... That is cool beyond... That seems to have fallen through. Any other suggestions for how to deal with this?

Do you want a serious one? Well, yeah, why not? Can I just say, at at the beginning I thought how could you joke about this policy but it's amazing how much you can. I love it but um. Well we've got no choice. Well they obviously think this will work and they say it worked in Australia although I mean I did a story not that long ago where we got some leaked information from the Home Office where even the most senior Home Office official said there was no evidence. To be fair, he said no evidence either way, but no evidence of a deterrent. One thing that people come up with, and I have to say the Labour Party, they've got a plan, but it doesn't actually give you loads of detail, is actually going to Franceance talking to people before

they get onto the boats and allowing them to apply for asylum in the uk from france but the government will never ever do that because then they say it tells people you can come through a safe country and get asylum so they won't but that's just one idea what if we stop interfering in the places they come from and causing all the mayhem that causes a number of refugees in the first place? Logistically awkward. It's going to take a time machine aside from anything else. I know. I mean, it was Blair, wasn't it? It's always Labour's fault.

There's also the awkward fact that many people want to come to England because they speak English because we colonise their countries. You know, I don't think it's an opinionated thing to say that people should be thought of as human beings. I mean, I was recently in eastern Turkey in the mountains on the border of Iran where it was minus 20 degrees and I met 10-year-old kids

who were being taken over those mountains trying to flee. My oldest son is 10. Think about what it would take to take your child onto that journey is what I say you know sometimes we forget in this conversation that even using terms like you've got levels of humanity that we keep dehumanizing people and even saying refugee migrant expat I grew up as an expat

which is someone who is welcome in another country. And when we say migrant, it automatically is, oh, we're not sure if we like you. And that's part of the problem with the whole conversation is the way that we're using language. I'm going to say this, but here's the truth. The net loss of workers from Brexit as of September of last year, which was about six months ago, is 330,000 people. We don't have enough nurses, doctors, teachers, hospitality is understaffed, social care is in disarray, millennials are too anxious to work. Gen Z don't have the attention span to hold down a real job.

We're turning our noses up at approximately 80,000 people who are traversing entire continents illegally, crossing the channel in what are essentially inflatable paddling pools, which they have paid for themselves, that would have taken them way longer than us to earn and save up for. And we're sitting here going, oh, no, what do we do with them? Oh, I don't know. Could we possibly use them? Moving on, another question.

This can go to Chris and Ria. Which former number 10 incurred the wrath of the current number 10? It's Gary Lineker, Andy. That's correct. He compared the policy to Germany in the 30s, didn't he? He compared the language. The language in it, yeah. To the pre...

I mean, what's the right language here? You know, the thing. All that stuff that happened um in the 30s you compared it to that it's godwin's law isn't it you kind of lose the argument if you turn any debate into like a comparison with the nazis because it's kind of like the base level comparison isn't it godwin's law is a terrible name because every time someone does, I have to Google what the name of the law is to remind myself, because it doesn't say what it is. So I kind of got my own little name for it, which, it's quite wordy, but I usually call it misjudged assertions that trade Hitler and Nazi comparisons over constructive

knowledge. It's quite wordy, but the only problem with that is the acronym is Matt Hancock. I just think he's got enough on his plate at the moment. Took me ages to think of that. So where does this leave you, Andy, as a sports presenter? Do you tweet? Mostly cricket stats.

Oh, right. But I avoid any cricket stats about 1930s Germany. I mean, it's not as if he crowbarred it into the analysis of Aston Villa versus Bournemouth. You know, he expressed it on Twitter, on his Twitter account. Also, I mean, it's a bit of a massive storm in the tea cup because they're saying, oh, he's influential. Is there any statistical evidence of anybody ever changing their mind after they've read a tweet?

The whole point of Twitter is that you know what you think already. I have to say that the BBC spokesperson who said Mr Lineker will be spoken to and will be reminded of his responsibilities maybe needs to be sent on a pomposity awareness call. Given the main problem is the excitement among the Daily Mail... Can they not even it out by letting Alan Shearer tweet about Stalin? That would work, surely. Wouldn't it have been worse if he actually defended the Nazis?

At the end of the day, the Nazis were bad. That's what a football pundit would say, isn't it? At the end of the day... They've got to be disappointed with that. That's what a football pundit would say, isn't it? At the end of the day... At the end of the day. They've got to be disappointed with that. The real problem with Glynica is we've now had two days of Opus Day-style BBC self-flagellation instead of actually analysing the policy.

Yes, which we've just added to over the last ten minutes. And some breaking news just reaching us. The government are now asking people to take an asylum seeker with them on overseas holidays. Quoting the newly appointed Minister for Public Aggravation, Petula Snarklebury, just leave them somewhere not too obvious. At the end of that round,

Team Echo Chamber have five and Team Echo Chamber have four. Our next question is for Anoushka and Andy. Matt Hancock, the former health secretary and eponymous star of Matt Hancock's 100,000 leaked WhatsApp messages, was this week revealed to have set out to what the pants off everyone.

Scare? Yes, well, it's basically... Terrify? The actual word? Frighten. Correct. I mean, I didn't bother to read Matt Hancock's WhatsApp because I knew what would be in them.

All of them? Well, yeah, they'd all have the same voice. This has been such amazing advertising for WhatsApp, though, hasn't it? Like, it's in the news every single day, and the advert seems to be that your messages are completely safe unless you're as stupid as Matt Hancock. You can imagine Matt Hancock, can't you, meeting Cruella de Vil and go, oh, thank you very much for helping me to write my book about all my dogs.

I'm going to introduce you to all my dogs now. And you could do with a new coat, by the way. But please treat them nicely. I'll be back in an hour. Did Matt Hancock succeed in frightening any of your pants off? He's frightened me from the point of view that what this has highlighted is how many governmental decisions are being made on WhatsApp and shouldn't be, because now every other minister has just spent half an hour deleting their entire WhatsApp history

and everything else will be gone. There's just records of decisions that we will never find and never know about again, and that scares me a lot. So I think we need to give all MPs Nokia 3310s immediately. He won't go away. You know, the days when John Profumo was embroiled in a scandal that brought down the government and he went and did charity work in the East End for 30 years and nobody ever heard a peep from him. Those days are gone. Matt Hancock is with us now for many years to come. Yeah, I know. Look at the shoulders.

All the shoulders drooped in the front. On the night this story broke, I was working and I was desperately trying to work out what the Telegraph had because it was Isabel Oakeshott. We guessed it was Matt Hancock. We called his guy and the guy said, I know nothing. And I had this moment of conspiracy where I was like, Matt Hancock's in on it. He knows about this story and he's just gone for it because he thinks no publicity is bad publicity. But I have to say I've changed my mind now. Do you think that just somewhere within the 100,000 messages

on WhatsApp, there's one from his new girlfriend that just says, the 100,000 messages on WhatsApp, there's one from his new girlfriend that just says, you're such a good kisser? And he's just thought it's worth taking the risk for that to come out. More COVID nostalgia now. Andy and Anushka can take this question. Whose appointment was criticised for being too soon? Oh.

Poor Sue. That's pretty childish. Get your frying pan out. Is it Sue Gray? Correct. Sue Gray, who has been appointed Chief of Staff by Keir Starmer. And I kind of thought that, in a way, it was handing a stick to the Tories to beat him with,

because they can bleep that it's a conspiracy and the Grey Report was a left-wing stitch-up. Although, of course, Boris Johnson did declare that the Grey Report exonerated him. Starmer went on LBC to reassure the world that nothing improper had happened and then repeatedly dodged any further questions because nothing screams nothing improper has happened more than failing to answer the same question eight or more times.

Is there anything dodgy about this? This is the bit of the show where we bring balance, right? Right. Where we're trying to... Right, OK. Yeah, yeah. I mean, he had a beer once and now he's offered a job to a woman that's probably going to do a really good job at it

after she delivered the report, after she had no conflicts of interest. Oh, my God, what a story. I don't think this is balance. I'll try and provide balance. He's an idiot. I'll listen to that interview. What is wrong with these people?

Why can't they just talk normally? He avoided the question ten times. He was literally asked, when did you offer her the job? And he couldn't answer the question. And it's just embarrassing to watch. It's like the kid with chocolate on their face who says, I didn't touch the chocolate. At least the kid has got the guts to lie.

You don't catch the kid going, well, I've been thinking about chocolate for quite some time. I've had plans around chocolate. I'm friends with the chocolate, but not like close friends. If I saw chocolate at a party, I might wander over

to the chocolate and say a few words. No, I think, no. That was very funny. Is it Lydia, Ria? No, I think, no, that was very funny. He's an idiot, Ria. No, no, hear me out. A boring idiot. A boring idiot who has spent his

life sitting in the corner and everyone's ignored him and everyone's just like, oh my gosh, he is so boring. And in that interview, he could have easily have answered the question, but he knew if he answered the question, that was it. The interview was over and he just wanted more attention. He just wanted... That is... You see it all the time

when the kid that never gets any attention gets asked a question and they talk and talk and talk because they're just so grateful that you remembered their name. That is a shy boy that just needs attention. So vote for the shy boy that just needs attention in So vote for the shy boy that just needs attention

in the next general election. I mean, it would be... I think you've just found the balance there, Rio. Yeah, there we go. Boris Johnson was a clown and Keir Starmer's boring. If we could somehow just get the two of them to have sex and see what pops out. Oh, that's a lot of lunches ruined on Saturday.

I'll tell you that. Right, OK. So at the end of that round, Chris and Ria on Team Echo Chamber have nine and Andy and Anushka on Team Echo Chamber have eight. Moving on now to the final round of this series of the News Quiz. Now, we tend on the show to focus on news that's happened, but now, since we're off air for the next few weeks,

we're going to focus on news that will or may happen whilst we're off air before the next series. We'll start with a question for Ria. Beware the Ides of March. Good advice given to one Julius H Caesar back in the day. Why might Beware the Ides of March be particularly good advice this year? Is that the day that the junior doctors are going to be striking? Yes.

Or start striking? Yeah. My understanding is that in real terms in the last 15 years, their salaries have gone down by 26% and they had no choice but to strike because I think our current health secretary, who is... Is it Stephen Barclay? It keeps changing.

I mean, I'm wrote it in to do it next week, so I... You're a qualified doctor. I'm a qualified virologist. Well, I think you'll find on the 13th to the 15th of March, you'll basically pass as a qualified doctor. We need any tips for how to treat yourself at home? OK, you know what? I'll be your GP right now. What are the symptoms?

Right. OK. Symptoms are are i get this strange thing when i put the television on and there's something other than sport on that i'll start shivering uh what do you think might cause that okay so i'm going to be your gp okay give me a moment i'm going to google it just like mine and it's just politics of the strikes, it seems that it's sort of never-ending, these... Well, the nurses and all the other health unions, everyone who works in the NHS who's not a doctor, there's some progress.

But the doctors are asking for quite a big increase. I mean, they're asking for a 26% increase in pay, or I think the reversal of a 26% cut, which is basically the same thing and given that the nurses when they were at 19% there was absolutely no chance of talking I think there's probably some way to go for the doctors and the government negotiators have pointed out that the average patient is now 26% less ill so it's a tactical decision, is it? They know they dare not really take on the nurses in an industrial dispute,

but with the junior doctors, the junior doctors will be too knackered to put up a fight. Here's the thing as well, is if there's no doctors in work, more people will probably die, but as people die, the waiting lists get shorter. And what you'll find is the waiting lists will probably get shorter with no doctors in work than with doctors in work. So maybe we'll just make it more of a permanent thing.

What terrifies me is that Chris just came out of that as a comic conceit that somewhere in government there's someone thinking, wait a second, that's... The government has also set up an emergency helpline to cover the strike days. I've been chosen as a beta tester, actually, to make sure it's working properly. So let's find out what's going to happen if you call 999

on a strike date. I do wish the BBC would get newer phones. Let's see what they call. This is the emergency-only emergency line. If you're already dead, press 1. Press 2 for how to give a general anaesthetic with a frying pan.

Press three for how to use a sandwich toaster as a defibrillator. Right, well, that should keep us all safe. It's Budget Day next week, so any parents of young children listening, be prepared for your kids to start badgering you for a toy replica red box and a Jeremy Hunt action figure. Andy and Anushka, why else should your child care

about the latest round of money shuffling coming up next week? Because there's a chance that Jeremy Hunt might make child care a little bit more cheap? Did I make that slightly too obvious? OK, I'll give you two points. I mean, is this the right thing to do? Should we, I mean... What, make childcare cheaper?

Well, I mean, children... I think so. What do they really contribute to the economy? I think it's their mothers. It's us. They need to get us back to work. I mean, there's going to be a lot of focus on labour and activity because there's been this huge rise in the number of people who are choosing not to work people retiring early there hasn't actually been a huge rise in the number of people staying at home to care for children but that's one of the things they're going to look at and young people I was talking to someone about it today and they said it was basically because

we seem to like the lockdown a bit more than other countries and that people thought if I've got enough money to retire if I've paid off my mortgage won't go back to work and so now they need to figure out how to persuade those people to go back which might be quite difficult. So their calculation is that after a while of working at home and the kids being there and driving them mad, in the end, if you can offer them childcare, they'll go back into work? Well, this is early retirees. So childcare, yeah, they're hoping that women and men

go back into work, you know, because they've got more help. Because our childcare prices are unbelievable. Five times the size of Iceland. But they also need to figure out how to make people in their 50s go back to work. So you're saying we should send all British children to Iceland? Send them to work in Iceland or Asda.

Any of the shops. Right. Finally, can I have your predictions for what is going to happen over the next six or seven weeks that we are off air? I think everything's going to be fine. Ooh! Everything's going to be fine.

I think, I mean, Putin will apologise and say, I'm sorry, I don't know what came over me, I don't know why I went into the Ukraine, you know, I was just having a bad day. And he'll tell all his soldiers to put everything back where they found it. Donald Trump, they'll discover that actually all the weirdness was happening because he had a previously undetected urinary tract infection. And now he's on the medication.

That's fine. He'll stand down. I think he'll be fine, Andy. Don't worry. Well, that's cheered me up. Anushka, what are you expecting to happen over the next month and a half? I mean, I think the doctors will strike. I think the Telegraph will still be doing pages 1 to 7 on Matt Hancock's WhatsApps. And I don't think they'll have stopped the boats. Not by then.

Chris? I think they'll be in agreement reached somewhere and maybe Boris Johnson will knight Sue Gray and Keir Starmer will make Boris Johnson's dad his chief of staff and we'll all find out that Matt Hancock is actually a really good kisser. Ria, what's your expectation? I think climate change,

I mean, it's so cold this week, I think it's going to continue. I think that the channel's actually going to freeze over and everyone's just going to walk across the channel. But in both directions. So while they come over,

we're going to go back over there. We're going to have our filet brie and all the other cheeses that we've missed so much. I'm certainly going to enjoy some good German sausage. I mean actual sausage. That's good. We had optimism from Andy and Ria saying she does not fear

the worst. That brings us to the end of this series of the News Quiz. And the final scores are 11 points all. A thrilling draw between Team Echo Chamber and Team Echo Chamber. Neither Echo Chamber has won or lost, as is so often the way. And some breaking news reaching us ahead of the budget next week. Following criticisms of the accuracy of its forecast, the Bank of England Monetary Policy Committee

has just announced a change in how it formulates its predictions in an effort to make the forecast better and more environmentally friendly. It will no longer use the entrails of freshly slain animals to calculate economic trends. Instead, the chair of the MPC will hit an aubergine into a wall with a tennis racket and a vegan Haruspex will examine the splatter patterns. So we'll have more accurate economic forecasting as well.

Thank you very much for listening to this series. I've been Andy Zaltzman. Goodbye. APPLAUSE Taking part in the news quiz were Andy Hamilton, Chris McCausland, Anoushka Astana and Ria Lina. In the chair was Andy Zaltzman, and additional material was written by Alice Fraser, Laura Claxton, Catherine Brinkworth, Sachandrika Chakrabarti and Cody Darla.

The producer was Sam Holmes, and it was a BBC Studios production. Hello, I'm Brian Cox, and we are back for season 26 of The Infinite Monkey Cage. And we begin, where do we begin, Robin? We start in a galaxy far, far away and a long time ago. It's Australia. Oh, OK, Australia then. We start, it felt like a galaxy to me, but we were in Australia where we talked about, well, spiders. You were scared of spiders.

I wasn't actually scared of spiders, but you'll hear many trailers for this thing where they say, I wasn't scared of spiders. Oh, we also did astronomy, actually astronomy in Australia, which is fantastic. Then we came back to the UK and we had guests like Ross Noble, Susan Calliman, Russell Kane, Ed Byrne, Joe Brand, Sally Gunnell. Yeah, Anna Frye, Sue Black, Randa Munro. And we found out, amongst other things, how to commit the perfect murder. Which still hasn't really worked for me because I'm still upset at him.

Listen on BBC Sounds. What a great platform. It is wonderful, isn't it? Unless you've got that Robbie Ninson Professor Cox I'd leave that poor pussy alone in its box That cat may be as dead as a rat You can wage in the infinite monkey cage