Friday Night Comedy from BBC Radio 4 - The News Quiz – 20th January

Episode Date: February 17, 2023

Andy Zaltzman is joined by Geoff Norcott, Shaparak Khorsandi, Helen Lewis and Ian Smith. This week they discuss Keir Starmer's plans for the NHS, teachers' strikes and the political row over Scotland's gender recognition reform bill.Hosted and written by Andy Zaltzman with additional material from Alice Fraser, Mike Shephard, Katie Storey, Vicky Richards and Cameron Loxdale.Producer: Georgia Keating Executive Producer: James Robinson Production Co-ordinator: Becky Carewe-Jeffries Sound Editor: Marc WillcoxA BBC Studios Production

This is the BBC. This podcast is supported by advertising outside the UK. BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Before we start this week's news quiz, under the terms of the new public order bill, I have to make sure I'm not about to accidentally protest against something. Under the bill, you could be arrested if police think you might be about to disrupt something. So I'm going to use the all-new government protest self-test kit. It's a bit like using a DIY breathalyser before driving.

I'm going to think into this bag... ..and... ..using the public order bill app on my phone, it's going to tell me if I might be about to protest, so... LAUGHTER I'm getting a reading. and it's going to tell me if I might be about to protest. I'm getting a reading. It says that the device came in a cardboard box and I own a marker pen, so that's a potential placard right there.

Public safety reasons, therefore, this episode of the News Quiz will take place with me glued to my chair to stop me gluing myself to anything else. Now that we're safe, welcome to the News Quiz. Hello. Welcome to the News Quiz. I am Andy Zaltzman. I'm inspired by Jeremy Hunt's helpful video

explaining inflation by stacking empty coffee cups on top of each other. I will be explaining why everything in the public sector is run out of money by playing a game of scissors, paper, stone, without the stone using banknotes as paper and a flamethrower instead of scissors. Time to meet our teams this week. We have Team Price Hikes against

Team Yikes Strikes. On Team Hikes, we have Geoff Norcott and Shaparak Korsandi. On Team Hikes, we have Geoff Norcott and Shaparak Korsandi. And on Team Yikes, we have Ian Smith and Helen Lewis. Ian and Helen, you can take our first question this week. Keir Starmer reportedly regularly instructs his MPs to act as if what scenario is actually happening? The apocalypse.

It's close, but it's not quite right. Any other suggestions? He's left wing. Is it pretend that they want to be in government? Essentially, that's getting closer. Is it about polling? It is, yes, Helen, well done. It is about the idea that they've got to really want it,

so they can't be coasting in to Downing Street, which, you know, 20 points ahead in the polls, but they have to be hungry for it. And if I look at Keir Starmer's cabinet, there's one thing I think, God, those people are hungry for power, aren't they? Look at them, they're like apprentice candidates, they're mad for it. And that's the energy that they'll be bringing to 2023, I believe. Yes, apparently it tells them to imagine

they're only two points ahead in the polls, not 20 points ahead. Is that good advice, to imagine things are going worse than they are, just generally in life, would you say? That sounds sort of like football manager advice, doesn't it? Like, all right, just get in your heads. Get in your heads. We're not 20 points ahead here, we're only two points ahead, all right? I mean, the thing is, he's not acting like somebody

who doesn't think he's 20 points ahead. He just jetted off to Davos, like the president-elect. But the point is, I guess the point is, the reason he's saying it is because it was sort of gifted to them. The Tories at some point last year seemed to decide subconsciously that they didn't really want to be in power anymore and to treat that 2019 election victory like some sort of Brewster's Millions-style challenge

where, like, we've got to get rid of all 80 seats, I just want ideas. A lot of people say, you know, with Starmer, a lot of people say, well, we've had exciting, it's time for boring and competent. And it's a sort of tragic thing that no-one thinks we could sort of have a bit of both, you know, it's like some binary choice.

But what it could be like is, you know when your female friends date an international drug trafficker? And that's Boris, right? And then they go, right, I'm now dating a guy called Brian who collects traffic cones. Starmer is Brian, isn't he? He's like the first guy that your mum dates after getting divorced. The bummer is Brian, isn't he?

He's like the first guy that your mum dates after getting divorced. And he steals traffic cones when he's sober. That's the key thing. The best thing about it is the fact that Rishi Sunak played this incredible blinder of simply pretending he wasn't in the house at all, right? He just kept incredibly quiet. And everyone went, oh, Rishi Sunak, he's doing really well. And then this week he came out and said things

and people went, oh, no. oh no oh no this isn't working so this week he did a video where he just sat in the back of the car without a seat belt on instant hundred quid fine and it's like he's got this mad plan because he's incredibly rich just maybe he's going to like power all the economy through a series of very small fines as he's actually just littering here perhaps you know something and then there was this mad thing where he took this private jet flight as well, and it provoked the most insane quote from the Lib Dem deputy leader. She said, it's simply ridiculous he can't get a train like the rest of the British public do. Can we? I thought, can we?

Like, what service on Avanti West Coast do you know? Is there a secret one for MPs? But Starmer, I suppose the thing with Starmer is, like, I get the strategy, I think it makes sense, is the Tories are imploding, but it's still quite a long time to sort of tap dance your way all the way into number 10. But he has to say these things that are fairly meaningless,

like, you know, Britain's open for business. We're the grown-ups in the room. You know, you can't get better than a quick fit fitter. Well, no-one disagrees with that, but it doesn't really mean anything. I find it very relatable, because I think... He doesn't seem to know what he would do in any key, important situation, and I think that represents us as British people.

I think if I was in his position, I was sort of, what would you do about this sort of thing? I'd be like, oh, well, I don't know. So when you see someone saying that, you're like, yeah, my kind of guy, actually. It's like a slight preference

to sort of thinking someone has bad policies and thinking someone has no policies. Like, when you have the like, the two options of, let's send immigrants to Rwanda, or a guy going, I don't know what I'd do with them. You're like, him. I'm enjoying the fact that Labour have really done this drive now

to get digital, and they're going to use what they call, you know, social media to get to voters. And it's Keir Starmer's way, I think, of being very youthful. And I think come the election, he's going to really go for it and go, oh, my God, this is like a total dream come true for me. I so want to be prime minister. And his MPs will be going, go on, Keir, you've got this, babe. He did say a couple of things this week,

this can go to Geoff and Shappi. He told global business leaders in Davos that under a Labour government, he would bring back what? Any suggestions for him there? I want to bet that it's something bafflingly generic, like he's bringing back Britain, or he's bringing back business. Is he bringing back national service? But for the NHS?

So we all have to do, like, a three-month stint in a sort of randomly selected medical position? Right, I like the sound of this, Ian. It would solve a lot. It would cause a lot as well. It's very much a two-edged scalpel, that one, isn't it? Is it? Because he had this big interview with Laura Koonsberg,

and he said that, like... Because even he knows he's got to start saying concrete stuff at some point. And he goes, look, I think we could have self-referrals for internal bleeding. And you're like, what? You know, it just struck me as, like,

not that, don't say that, of all the things. There's quite a popular sort of Alan Partridge meme where he's just lying on a bed spitballing terrible ideas. And you can just imagine him going, self-referral for internal bleeding. Lin, write this one down. Because it's internal.

I feel like you need... Also, you knew that Laura Kunzberg was not going to go, do you mean bleeding from your anus? But also, internal bleeding can be a bruise. That's what a bruise is, right? And this is the thing that they're missing with the NHS. They keep looking at, like, funding and all this. They're not looking at the patients and the reasons they go in.

My mum took my brother to A&E because she was convinced his willy was falling off. Turned out it was a little bit of eczema. And to this day, he says that was, like, the worst birthday. Fancy spending a 30th doing that? The correct answer, he'd bring back global investors. Oh. Oh, right. He did also say that if we don't get real about reform,

the NHS will die. Is he right? I think the big problem was, you know, if accident and emergency, it's very clear. When did you come here? Was it an accident or an emergency? And then we abbreviated it to A&E. I think people forgot what it was for,

so they're turning up and they're going, is it an accident or an emergency? Because you've got a cold and it is into its third week, but I'd argue that's a third thing which is a bit annoying. Shouldn't it be A and or E? There's definitely like a Venn diagram of like, my arm's off, and I didn't mean to do that, that's an accident.

But it feels urgent to me. I pick a team. And if you're picking a team, if your arm's off, you're going to go accident, not emergency, because if you go emergency and say it's not an accident, you've done that on purpose. There's an easy solution as well to sort of waiting times and stuff

like that. And maybe that's like a ripple effect. But we could make an hour longer. So if you make like an hour, like the length of what two hours is now, you're cutting waiting times in half. If you think about it. I think if you don't think about it, that's the key.

But would you then keep 24 hours in the day, or would a day remain as 24 of the 120-minute hours? Oh, this has lost me now. It's not a bulletproof idea. Helen, with Labour 20% ahead in the polls, how strong do you think that support is? How much is it just sort of passive support based on the government's heroic efforts

to disappoint all the people all of the time? I think there's definitely a none-of-the-above thing happening, but, yeah, the last year has been an absolute gift to them. I actually went on a holiday during Liz Truss being in charge and I missed about a third of her premiership. It's just kind of extraordinary. So, yeah, I think they have this phrase that you hear in Labour circles, which is that we want to be a magnet, not a skip.

Again, what does that mean? I don't know what that stuff means. I I don't know what that stuff means I genuinely don't know what that means So they want to draw in people rather than people just chucking their vote in there because what's the worst that can happen? Well say that then! You know, be a magnetic skip

Very useful in a lot of ways I think you could be onto some this could be the biggest thing since your Bitcoin scheme Andy But what about when you take the magnetic skip back to where you store the magnetic skips and all the other metal skips? You always see through the little holes in schemes here. But then they're going to

be like, this is going to take us an hour to clean up because we've made the hours longer. Solving that problem. I mean, he's doing this big thing where he's taking on the left. And you feel like, I think, I mean, look, I'm not a left-wing person myself, but it feels like you're trolling

them now because there was an interview on this podcast where they said to him, who would you rather sit next to at the Arsenal? Would it be Jeremy Corbyn or Piers Morgan? He said, Piers Morgan. Yeah, I mean, that's the right noise, by the way. That's what they've become, like. They've become like that family next door that are always fighting

and then you see a TV fly out the window and then they come out all dishevelled, smoothing down their hair, going, hi, can we run your country? Where do you live? Parliament. And Rishi Sunak, responding to Labour's lead,

has instructed his advisers to do what once a week? Oh, it's come up with a tagline against Labour, which is hilarious, right? Because there's like hundreds of special advisers. So the quality, either they're all going to converge on the same one, which is, have you thought about saying something about the NHS? Or there's going to be absolutely

insane ones, where they're like, have you thought about dressing up as a duck, walking behind Kirstarmer, quacking alarmingly, and then he'll look stupid. It's so bland now, isn't it? It's sort of like they're scrapping over the sort of beige, vanilla centre ground. It's very comical.

It's like a whole series of MasterChef where they're only allowed to use dry cereal and poultry. And I know that people say, well, I'm ready for boring, but I don't know, I feel it's so boring it's sort of become funny again. I like that you're trying to make the case that no-one wants boring to a man who's a fan of test cricket. Well, you've just lost 40 points. So, to the neutral observer,

amidst the social, industrial and political unrest that has engulfed the current government, it would seem that standing in a bucket of potatoes whistling classic show tunes would exude enough of an I'm-more-competent-than-that-lot vibe to win the next election. But Starmer does remain cautious but how could labour lose from here i think it will be something because he's sort of like caught in a

sort of more patriotic labour base so he'll do something accidentally like trip up and fall on a swan accidentally break a swan's neck or something, and anyone in that situation, you're going to panic, you're going to try and do CPR, you don't know where to push on a swan. Where's its chest? It's just like a chest with a neck. I think you've got to do it like a bagpipe, haven't you? Yeah. Inform, educate and entertain.

Right, yes, the Labour Party are 20 points ahead in the polls. Leader Keir Starmer has been laying out more details of his plans for government. By more, I mean at least vaguely some, and by details, I mean headlines. But still, we're starting to learn what a Starmer premiership might look like. He warned that the NHS must reform or die, which is at least one more choice than the current government is giving it. Amongst his proposals was that patients should be able to bypass GPs and refer themselves straight to specialists, skipping that unnecessary

and tedious professional medical expertise phase of the diagnosis process. The proposal was described by one GP as monumentally stupid. And I guess it could potentially lead to, say, ophthalmologists having to say, well, I can understand why you referred yourself to me, but I can also reassure you that your eyes are fine, but your hat is too big. It's the kind of specialist thing that GPs tend to pick up on. At the end of that round, the scores are Team Hikes, Jeff

and Shappi have four, and Ian and Helen on Team Strikes are on minus 36. This question goes to Jeff and Shappi. Complete the following legendary rock lyric. Schools out for... Most of this generation of kids, generally.

I mean, they've missed a lot of school, haven't they? They have missed a lot of school. I don't remember what I learned. I might as well not have gone. I used to think Bognor Regis was in Africa. Like... I was 21 when I found out it wasn't. Specifically, when is school going to be?

Strikes. We've got more strikes, haven't we? It's the 1st of Feb and the 15th and the 16th of March. Yes. Oh, you've got kids. You've got that email from school. Bit of PlayStation with my boy. Sorry, I mean homeschooling. Homeschooling. Potato, potato.

It's the winter of discontent, isn't it? I would say, I mean, this, I mean, obviously there's some people in very, very difficult situations, but for anyone in the 70s who lived through the real one, they must... It's not the same. I mean, it's not...

Because you've got... Trains aren't working. Well, I do a bit of work from home, you know what I mean? You know, there are more private doctors available these days. But the Royal Mail, when they said they're not doing parcels, like, they still do that, do they? I just thought... I thought the Royal Mail was for when you sort of sent things that weren't really time-sensitive.

And also, like, when they... The way they are belittling the strikers, they're pretending as though this trust didn't spaff £50 billion up the wall. I find that quite difficult, that when you say that, they're like, oh, that was old news. But it was £50 billion. And the Education Secretary, what's her name?

I keep saying Gillian McKeith, but it wasn't her, was it? She was the poo lady. Gillian Keegan. She was scolding teachers, saying that, you don't have to strike to get my attention. They don't fancy you. She's talking to teachers as though they're toddlers, trying to get the attention of a busy parent

by shoving worms up their nose, instead of, like, just fighting for a little bit of that money that Liz Truss lost. I think if you did the maths, I think it would probably be about 500,000 years. I think you have made it clear I can't do the maths. 250,000 years of the hours have been extended. Headteachers aren't striking, are they?

No. Which is, thank God for that. I mean, who else would scowl their way through assembly and walk across the playground for no apparent reason? I mean, I used to be a teacher, which is... That silence bugs me, Matt. I used to have a teacher, and I guess most of you were just horrified, I think, mostly. I used to have a teacher, and I guess most of you were just horrified, I think, mostly. And some of you were thinking,

PE. PE. Offensive. I worked as a teaching assistant for, like, six months when I was in uni, and the worst moment for me is I'd been out clubbing the night before and I got woken up by a child because I'd fallen asleep. And the

class kid woke me up and I was like thank you James and I gave him a sticker for good behaviour. Well done. Well done for waking sir up. Hannah do you think there could be benefits from this in terms of teaching children self-sufficiency? If we make them go to school when the teachers are on strike,

to keep the kind of Darwinistic social competition that they have to conquer each other and have one triumphant child at the end of the day, is that...? Yeah, I'm madly in favor of a sort of minor british hunger games and you know you said it out loud it seems so obvious yeah i do the thing that's fascinating to me is the fact that rishi sanak has decided that he wants to get into a popularity contest with nurses and teachers who do you like more like the person that takes your child away for eight hours a day so you can get on with stuff or me

yes teachers in england and and Wales are getting on their stricycles. Sorry, going on strikes. After the National Education Union voted in favour of several days of local and national action, or inaction, depending on how you look at it. Nurses and ambulance staff are also set for a simile strike on the 6th of February, so

do practice some emergency medical treatment on yourself over the next couple of weeks so you're prepped and ready if the worst comes to the worst. Head teachers will not strike after a ballot by the National Association of Head Teachers failed to meet the needed 50% turnout threshold, a result that some have claimed was due to disruption caused by postal strikes.

So we could be in a situation where the government now comes out in support of some strikes... LAUGHTER..but only as long as they prevent other strikes. At the end of that round, the scores are now eight to Geoff and Shappie and minus 33 to Ian and Helen. This question can go to Ian and Helen. What happened to Scotland this week for the first time in 24 years? Sunshine.

So the government invoked Section 35 of the Scotland Act in order to block Scottish legislation to give recognition to transgender people at 16 and after a much shorter time and with no medical diagnosis? It's very difficult to talk about this without knowing that whatever you say... Because what I found was if I have expressed any view, say, just out of the top of my head on Twitter, that doesn't sort of hammer trans women into the ground, right? I have got

just an avalanche of people screaming at me and saying, well, would you let your daughter shower with a man that identifies as a woman? And I say, no, I only let my daughter shower with men who identify as men. And then I have the opposite experience, right, which is that I say something on the other side and then people scream at me. But I've come up with an answer, and that answer is men. Geoff. Thank you, Princess.

I was going to say, I'll tell you this one. It is complicated. It's so complicated, you can get stick for saying it's complicated. People go, it's not complicated at all. What is a woman, Jeff? What is a woman? Well, a blinding. Women are blinding. You know, they're lovely people, but... They're like men, but slightly less good.

No, I mean... I mean, I saw some incredible stuff this week. There was that Labour MP, Lloyd... Lloyd Russell-Moyle. There was this debate, and a female MP had talked about sort of feeling vulnerable in a situation, and he really ripped into it, he got really, really furious, and eventually he issued this apology,

where he said, I'm sorry, but I'm just so passionate, and kept repeating the fact he was passionate I thought that is a great bloke next time my missus is angry at me for how I've reacted I'm like babe I'm just really passionate about finding a car parking space all right I think young people have got this like my boy he's 15 and his mate was coming round and I'd previously known this mate as a girl. And he said, just to let you know that they've come out as non-binary and I just want you to know that their pronouns are they and them. And then he says to me, but, Mummy, it's fine if you get it wrong,

cos we know you're old. But politically, Helen, what does this do to the United Kingdom and Scottish independence? Well, look, not me, to be clear, Andy, not me, but a very cynical person would say that the Scottish National Party are very happy to have this row. Some might say that they got legal advice all the way through and the European Human Rights Commission has said to them

that this would inevitably lead to a conflict with the UK. Some might say that. I wouldn't. And some might say that's quite gross politicking, actually, to put people in that situation. I wouldn't say that. But that's essentially what's happened. It's run into a clash. And the funny thing about it is that all of these very serious men

who, until now, have regarded this subject as a bit like sort of talking about the lower orders, because they're women, and now suddenly, oh, my God, it's a constitutional issue i'm so excited and so i used to think i'm really annoyed that men don't talk about this subject and it turned out there was a mere amuse-bouche of annoyance and the fact that they are now talking about it but yeah i think um it's it's very it's going to turn into a big row that is very useful for the smp because they want to have another referendum the west Westminster government's denying them one

and this is their argument that Scotland is not allowed to make its own laws. Yes, the Westminster government has decided to block the Scottish Parliament's gender recognition reform bill from passing to Royal Assent by using a constitutional mechanism called a Section 35 order. The first time Section 35 has been invoked

since devolution in the late 1990s. Constitutionally, it's highly problematic, with the united bit of the term United Kingdom having become increasingly sarcastic over recent political times. The issue of sex, gender and self-identification has rapidly become one of the most toxic battlegrounds in the culture wars. Personally, I'm a huge fan of tolerance. I love tolerance, and if there's anyone who doesn't love tolerance as much as I do,

I will personally hunt them down on social media and inundate them with vitriol until they're exactly as tolerant as I am. At the end of that round, Geoff and Shappi have 15, and Ian and Helen lagging behind on minus 25. Moving on now to our final round. In other side of the world news, who will not be emptying the tank for much longer? Oh, Jacinda Ardern of New Zealand.

Yes. The Prime Minister. She has stepped down at the age of 42 after five years because she's going to lose the election. No, because she says that she can't give it a full gas tank which is the weirdest fact about jacinda ardern she had a first cat you know like some people have a first lady she had a first cat it had um too many what cat fingers andy i feel like you're no but not a paw but individual fingers my god i don't know if there's a word for it. Toes? Is it, though? So her cat had, like, loads of fingers,

and therefore it was called paddles. And then her neighbour ran it over. Yeah. On purpose? I don't think it was a political gesture. Accident or emergency. New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern is surprised not just her

hemisphere, but all the other ones as well by resigning. Ardern quacked because she said she had nothing in the tank. Resigning because you don't feel up to it is a somewhat alien concept over here. But with an election due later this year, Ardern's Labour Party is trailing by four points in the

opinion polls. Four points and you're resigning. We'd have five prime ministers a day resigning at that rate. We did get close at one point last year, but we never quite tipped over the edge. Well, that brings us to the end of this week's news quiz. The final scores, Geoff and Shappi on Team Hikes have 17 and Ian and Helen on Team Strikes, minus 22. Thank you very much for listening.

I've been Andy Zaltzman. Goodbye. Taking part in the news quiz were Geoff Norcott, Ian Smith, Helen Lewis and Shapparack Korsandi. In the chair was Andy Zaltzman and additional material was written by The news quiz were Jeff Norcott, Ian Smith, Helen Lewis and Shaparak Korsandi. In the chair was Andy Zaltzman and additional material was written by Alice Fraser, Mike Shepherd, Katie Storey, Vicky Richards and Cameron Loxdale. The producer was Georgia Keating and it was a BBC Studios production. Nature Bang. Hello. Hello. And welcome to Nature Bang. I'm Becky Ripley. Thank you. solve complex mapping problems? And what can an octopus teach us about the relationship between mind and body? It really stretches your understanding of consciousness. With the help of evolutionary biologists. I'm actually always very comfortable comparing us to other

species. Philosophers. You never really know what it could be like to be another creature. And spongologists. Is that your job title? Are you a spongiologist? Well, I am in certain spheres. It's science meets storytelling with a philosophical twist. It really gets to the heart of free will and what it means to be you. So if you want to find out more about yourself via cockatoos that dance, frogs that freeze and single cell amoebas that design border policies, subscribe to Nature Bang from BBC Radio 4, available on BBC Sounds. single-cell amoebas that design border policies, subscribe to Nature Bang from BBC Radio 4, available on BBC Sounds.

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