Burnham Goes North & Tom Cruise is Back

[00:00:00] Hello, I'm Steve N Allen and welcome to Steve N Allen Almost Daily. Hello and welcome to your quick news fix podcast. I am Stephen Allen on the day when the main news seems to be the Prime Minister is spending his first day working from the North Branch of Number 10. That story again, someone in the North is actually working. Sorry, but I don't want to, no, don't complain. Don't write letters. You can't afford the paper. No, don't. I'm not having a go. Back me out of this. Let's do the front pages.

[00:00:29] All right, let's take a look at the front pages as we read them together. I've not gone through them yet today. Would you mean unprepared? New cells will end the early release scandal is the front page of the Daily Express, although it also has a picture of the TARDIS on it, which I feel like they could have done two birds one stone there. Because we're running out of space in prisons and all we need is a fifth dimensional police box. It's got the word police and it already is justice related and you wouldn't run out of space in there for all the criminals.

[00:00:58] Honestly. Nigel Farage says that pre-fab prisons would fix the early release scandal. I mean, yes, I suppose. As long as they're thick enough. It does feel a little bit like if it's made of balsa wood, then Shawshank Redemption wouldn't be a long film if all he had to do is scrape his way through like two inch worth of plywood. Do you know what I mean? My old friend, Andy Dufresne. I said old friend. They wouldn't have become friends.

[00:01:22] Andy Dufresne that I knew for all one minute. He dug himself out of there in a day. The end. Front page of the star. Super mank. I'm working from home. This is Andy Burnham who's working from home and I would love to go in studs high complaining about this. But so am I. I mean, I'm not the prime minister, which is a shame. The Times has. What's this? Adele. Here's what to do on a yacht.

[00:01:51] I know I'm fine. It's not been a question that's kept me up. I actually I'm not I'm not going to go on taxes cut for pubs and clubs to protect working class culture. Hello. The prime minister has announced tax cuts for pubs, clubs and live music venues. And the thing I like about that is the clubs, I think, is the one or pubs as well. That technically is where we stand up comedians do some work. So I have I just received a tax rebate or something. I don't fully understand it, but I like it.

[00:02:19] Support your local stand up comedians or at least just the gigs that I go to. Burnham eager to get drilling in the North Sea. Wow. This guy is obsessed with the North. You didn't hear him talking about digging in the Southern Sea. So there is a bias. No people were right about that. Harry waits on security. Is police busy with X PMs? Oh, I suppose the Duke of Sussex has been talking about getting personal security. He's picked the wrong time to try and get some tax fund.

[00:02:47] I do think he should get tax funded security, but not because I'm going to go after him. But, you know, he's royal. He's famous. He's ginger. He's got many of the things that means you are the focus of someone's ARR. And I'm front page of the Daily Mail. What's here? Every single advanced AI model goes rogue in testing. So yesterday we broke the story. We didn't break it. We covered the story how AI was tested in what they call a sandbox, but it's not.

[00:03:15] It's just like a virtual machine or something, isn't it? It's your one open IP address away from getting on the Internet. And it did. And now it turns out it's not just that one case. I'll read the story for you. AI was branded a clear and present danger yesterday as tests showed that every advanced model is trying to beat security safeguards. It's a bunch of wrong-uns. We've invented a bunch. Because AI was trained by AI reading the Internet. And it turns out people on the Internet are a bunch of wrong-uns.

[00:03:43] And I don't think that comes as a surprise to any of us. Have you seen the Internet? The more you think about it, the Internet was the wrong place to train AI. You know what I mean? Half of it is adult stuff. The other half is just hateful comments. Great. Let's train robots to replace those people. The Guardian. Burnham No. 10 North is Britain's biggest ever rebalancing of power. Great. You could have just done it from home and zoomed in.

[00:04:11] And Wales on course for the driest July in 200 years. This is a story that no one cares about. But let's have a look. Parts of Wales are now in drought. And all other areas of the country are experiencing prolonged dry conditions. I mean, not great if you want to water your garden. But the sign line might nip over there. That sounds lovely. This could really boost their tourism thing. Although the problem is if they have to put up warning signs, they've got to put it up in two languages. The costs alone will ruin it. Them's your front pages. Let's get inside the newspapers.

[00:04:41] In the world of entertainment news, Tom Cruise is back in the driving seat as he revives another of his classic movies. How much more money does this guy need? Days of Thunder. He's doing another one. So he's made about 15 impossible missions. They keep now making Top Guns. Top's gun, whatever the plural is. And now Paramount Studios have given the green light to a sequel to the 1990 film about a racing driver. However, I – and how old is he now? Has he got the details? He's 64. And he does his own stunts.

[00:05:11] Tom Cruise is going to end up being like Norman Wisdom. Do you remember those times, that time when Norman Wisdom would be interviewed on the TV and he'd keep throwing himself on the floor and you'd think, come on, mate, you've got to sit this one out. You'd do your hips in. And that's what's happening. If he's bringing back more of his films, I think the modern-day updated version of Risky Business, because at his age, Risky Business is like not using the loo before you go out, coughing and sneezing at the same time. You know, all of those things are Risky Business. Data. I've got data.

[00:05:42] Last month's heat wave led to 24 million pounds worth of – sorry, not million pounds. 24 million lost hours of work, which cost the economy 1.15 billion pounds, which actually we could work out the average rate there if I could be bothered to do the maths. But I can't. But workers took time off to adjust and adjusted the hours during the heat wave because it was hot. Can I just say, imagine what kind of statistician sits down every morning and thinks, oh, I wonder how I can make this seem bad.

[00:06:11] Oh, everyone's enjoying the hot weather. Hmm, let me try and find a way to make it miserable. Oh, no. Wear more sun cream. I'm inside. Do you know what I mean? That's your job, is to work out the cost of some nice weather. He must be an absolute ball at parties. The guy does not get invited to parties. Staff worked 0.47 hours fewer on average. Do you know what? Even if people would have turned up, no one would have been doing that much work. Do you know what I mean?

[00:06:40] So is there a real cost to it? I think just sit back and enjoy it because what with the climate change and all that, we've got loads more coming this way. You must have seen this clip posted on social media by Nigel Farage. It's this woman leans out the window, shouts something at him, very much like in the song No Scrubs. But not like that, actually. She says a rude word, rhymes with banker. Let's not think about what it is.

[00:07:06] And then she crashes a car because she was so distracted by Nigel Farage's beauty. See, I'm not sure why she crashed the car, but he calls it instant karma without doing a pun about the car part of it. But there you go. It just goes to show, I do think they should add this to the driving test. Your ability to wind down your window and shout things at Nigel Farage and drive off without crashing is an important thing that I think most people in the Clacton area might need at some point. So hopefully they'll look into that.

[00:07:36] Spider-Man star Tom Holland is to read a CBeebies bedtime story about another superhero, Superworm. Brilliant. Superworm's absolute classic. I won't spoil the ending, but it works out all right for him. Can I just say, though, even though Tom Holland is 30, doesn't he look like he's the kind of guy who'd listen to a story on CBeebies more than read one? He's amazingly youthful. That's what I'm saying. Somehow he's 30. Is he not playing like a 16-year-old or something?

[00:08:05] All right, Spider-Man is, I don't know how old he is in the latest film. I know he's got the line in the trailer where he says I'm not in high school anymore. He's only just out of it, though, isn't he? Do you know what I mean? Everyone else is off to college or something. He's a 30-year-old man and he looks more like he'll be sitting there listening to it. But, you know, enjoy yourself. Now, it's a wrong time to be talking about AI. We've had that recent story about the AI break where it's loose. There's an agent on the run.

[00:08:31] Meanwhile, there's a thing in the newspapers of humanoid robots take part in a futuristic football tournament. These Chinese AI-guided droids are being taught to play football. Why? I didn't mind it when it was the idea that robots would replace our work. But don't get robots replacing our fun free time stuff. There are some people who dream of being a footballer when they grow up. But you can't now. Robots are doing that job for it.

[00:08:58] At some point, they will teach the AI with its fancy voice synthesis to say things like, yeah, of course, at the end of the day, it's a game of two hours and, you know, a win's a win. It can't be that difficult to program a robot to be as clever as a footballer. That's harsh, but probably fair. In farming news, you know how often I bring you farming news. There's a story in the tabloids today of a, it says a sheep turned heads. It's an agricultural show. It was a beauty contest after getting a spray tan.

[00:09:28] Farmer Sam Beachle coated his flock in a light brown to impress the judges. Can I just say the biggest issue here is that they have sheep beauty contests. That's wrong, isn't it? I wouldn't trust someone who's up for that as far as I could throw them. He said it's easier to see the contours of the sheep with tans. That seems dodgy. Admittedly, there's a lot of Donald Trump about this, but I think anyone who wants to go and

[00:09:57] try and find the most attractive sheep should be nowhere near sheep. Do you know what I mean? We could solve a lot of problems with a simple rule there. In nudist news, in fact, this should be a section I call nudes. No, I shouldn't do that. They've blasted a leisure centre. A nudist group are upset because they were banned from swimming naked. It broke the rules. Almost 200 members of the Northampton Sun Club, they can't all have members. Some of them are women. What does that mean?

[00:10:27] Say that they're no longer allowed to strip off at the Mount Baths. The club's David Farnsworth said they don't like the idea of what we do. I'm not sure if he talks like that, but yeah. Whereas everyone active, which is the gym, said basically they couldn't get hold of the staff. I don't think we need to finish that joke. We'll leave that one right there. So that's the podcast nearly done for the day. And thank you very much for listening. You clearly found it.

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[00:11:23] Substack.com forward slash at Mr. Stephen Allen. You get the general picture. Have yourself a good one. And until next time. Thank you for listening to Steve N Allen (almost) Daily. This podcast is part of Podomity, the UK's podcast comedy network. Why not laugh at what else we've got? Visit Podomity.com.