TRASHFUTURE - Kafka’s Union Jack feat Ben McLeay

Episode Date: October 4, 2019

Here's a preview of this week's bonus, which features Riley, Milo, and Alice speaking with Ben McLeay (@thomas_violence) of the Boonta Vista (@boontavista) podcast. We discuss a horrible startup called Stockwell (you'll love this one) and a Spectator article with the most profound Brexit manager-calling energy. We almost entitled this episode ACCENTFUTURE because, as you can imagine, it got weird. If you want to get the whole thing, get in on Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/30449333 *COMEDY KLAXON* On October 9, come see Smoke Comedy, Milo's new-material night at the Sekforde (34 Sekforde Street London EC1R 0HA) in London! This next one features TF favourite Olga Koch as well as Radu Isac. The show starts at 8.00 pm and entry is £5 -- get tickets here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/smoke-comedy-featuring-radu-isac-and-olga-koch-tickets-74708544267 If you want to buy one of our recent special-edition phone-cops shirt, shoot us an email at trashfuturepodcast[at]gmail[dot]com and we can post it to you. (£20 for non-patrons, £15 for patrons) Do you want a mug to hold your soup? Perhaps you want one with the Trashfuture logo, which is available here: https://teespring.com/what-if-phone-cops#pid=659&cid=102968&sid=front

I thought I had better ring the council and ask whether I needed planning permission as I live in a conservation area and the Romaniacs around here would love to have a good row about an illegal flagpole while secretly seething with a rage at the cheek of my patriotism. They're going to kill all of us on the basis of a glorified homeowner's association dispute. Also, if you live in rural England, which I'm guessing she does rural fucking southern England clearly, you do not live in the midst of Romaniacs. That's not where those people live. They live where there are gin shops. You live in a strongly leave area and you're going to make it so that I can't get medication because you can't pay your house that color because it is a character.

Yes. It's a homeowner's association. You only have three neighbors. You live up a lane in a fucking village called Little Titling. You live in a converted windmill. They live in a converted carriage house and they're about to get torches and pitchforks and union flags to go besiege the Romaniac windmill. I hear it's Dutch. Get him. I rang the borough council and asked the question, this is what the article builds to. All the previous stuff about the fake rage and the, oh, I'm so oppressed as a conservative. We've talked about that a million times. This is where it gets juicy. This is the bit that I love because the rest of it is just the details of a long phone call.

That's a fantastic idea for a column. She clearly just, this is someone who had minutes to finish. I mean, I'm excited for this because I can't overstate the kind of mediocrity required to work in any kind of bureaucratic job that isn't like front line or whatever, in a home county's southeastern borough council. This is going to be something I will treasure. A guy in a sweater vest answering this phone. So I rang the borough council and asked the question, do I need planning permission to fly the union flag on my house?

Also, what is it with spectator columnists where they spend so much of their time ringing up people to ask questions they already know the answer to in the hope that the person will say something that will enrage them. Like obviously you don't need a fucking planning permission to hang a flag out of your window. Who the fuck is legislating for that? There's one in a hundred chance that someone will say, no, you can't because I'm the loony lift. You can't actually hang a flag out unless it's the ISIS flag.

I don't know why we have this by law. Sorry, Jeremy Corbyn. Sorry, your flag triggers my prone hand. I hate your patriotism because I'm embarrassed about what white people gave the world. That is an excellent point, said the lady, which cheered me up for I was half expecting her to send the police around to arrest me for a hate crime. I love that like this is such a trope in Australia's conservative media as well,

where they just do the stewardly these days bit. Yeah, you'll be stoned and jailed. You brought a flag out. Yeah, it's like they're just doing that. Basically, it's basically illegal to do this down. You're like, I mean, no, like it isn't, though. So basically, but it's not. You can't build a flagpole in the middle of the motorway,

but you can't do that. You could put up a flag. So patriotism is a crime now. If you can't do that, what's the point? It's a crime to be patriotic. Oh, so I, quote unquote, murdered my neighbour and then arranged his body into the union flag. And you're telling me I have to go to prison.

This is not what we thought the Nazis were for. But a crime of loving this great island nation. But for the crime of loving Great Britain, great, by the way, just ranting and raving at the judge. I only masturbate over Fern Britain, because that's the only woman patriotic enough for me. Benjamin Britain. So listening to Benjamin Britain.

So I'm going to go back to this. Before I was half expecting her to send the police round to arrest me for a hate crime, seeing as how Surrey has a relatively large proportion of MPs and the rebel group of EU backers who are blocking no deal Brexit. Surrey. Surrey. It's a hate crime to hang a flag

because dominant grieve voted against the withdrawal agreement. I love how she's managed to like twist that round. Are there people that's like, sorry. Actually want a no deal Brexit? Like, well, I mean, out of this spite and confusion. Oh, sure. Yeah, yeah, like a vague certainty that it won't affect their actual lives in a meaningful way.

Oh, because they're rich, so they're fine. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And they spend all their time doing Socratic Farmer dialogues. Yeah, why is the Socratic Farmer? Why is that figure really stuck with you? Yeah. He was the most compelling person. He's the most compelling person in the story though.

I might have assumed a gender of the farmer, actually. No, I think in this case, you can assume. Can I also assume that he's where he's tweed entirely? Yeah, and has bad rosacea. Oh, did you just assume my tweed? Just a conservative audience, applause. They're like, all these Ramona rebel MPs around where I live. Well, it's like, well, if they're rebel MPs,

that means they're all Tories. Honestly, how fucking Ramona can they be and still be Tories? Anyway. Okay, so carrying on. Also, by the way, to answer your question about the farmer, there was a scene change. He was a supporting character, but he might win the Oscar for best supporting actor in a column.

But reassuringly, she was cheerful and went off to find out. She came back to say. Reassuringly, she was as opposed to telling you to go fuck yourself. Yeah, reassuringly, she was basically polite. Thank goodness. I thought when I contacted the Islamic Caliphate of Britain, asking to say a prayer to Jesus and hang a flag and just love my family the good old fashioned way,

they'd send me to a reeducation camp to become a socialist. Look, there's only one place where you can call up the council with a relatively anodyne query and they just call you a cunt and hang up on you and it's Glasgow. I've heard that's a sign of affection. In Glasgow, if you get hit with an empty buck fast bottle and then robbed, it's actually a sign of affection. You're right.

I think you're a part of the culture. It's beautiful, actually. She came back to say, it's not a conservation issue, but whether you need permission does depend on how you wish to fly it. Well, how should I fly it? I asked. If you want a flagpole, you will need planning permission, but if you hang it on your window during the football season, that's fine. And then she said, how about hanging it on the window during Brexit season?

I said, it could be there for some time and I don't want it to look messy. I'm thinking of a wall mounting. It's Brexit season. It's Brexit autumn. Yes, it's hot girl Brexit. Yeah, Union Jack tits out. Hot girl Brexit.

She said she would have to put me through to someone else. You know what this has the energy of? This has the energy of, I think it was Mark Dice, but it was some American conservative pundit who called Baltimore police to report. It was Mark Dice. Yeah, it was Mark Dice. Okay. Well, he called Baltimore police to report a song called

Kill Trump by a rapper and the police said they didn't care and hung up on him. And he tweeted that. He tweeted, I called them and they said they didn't care and they hung up on me. And they added him and were like, yeah, that's right, bitch. So she said she would have to put me through to someone else whereupon a man answered and said he didn't know and would have to ask yet a third person. So this is just normal count, just council things.

That's the aesthetic. Yeah, this is really anytime you have to make a phone call to an organization. This is your experience. But of course, this is something that's worth getting paid 600 bucks to document. Yeah, I hate when I get put in a situation. That's not my department, Mark. Just passing this phone call round over a big tin of biscuits that have been there for 20 years for some reason.

Alice, your mark dice thing just made me think of another. I can't remember clearly who this was, but there was some right-wing columnist who rang up the police to report themselves for a hate crime. Oh, incredible. Do you guys remember this? Yeah, I do. We talked about it on the podcast.

It rings about, yeah. I think the police like wouldn't listen to them, even though they were reporting themselves.