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[00:00:00] Hello, I'm Steve N Allen and welcome to Steve N Allen Almost Daily. Welcome to the podcast that gets you up to date with the news on a day when some of the news is about the video shared by Donald Trump where he gets into the tiger enclosure and wrestles it. Some people say that's distasteful. The orange haired monster that has wrought terror apart. You see where this joke's going.

[00:00:27] You think I'm talking about the tiger and at the end of it I'm talking about Donald Trump. I'll save you the time. We'll do the front pages. Hello and welcome to me doing the front pages. So last night, a Thursday episode always has this. Wednesday night I appear on the telly box doing a newspaper review so I've seen the front pages. It's not going to help us because there's not a lot that we can cover. So last night I turned up for the newspaper review and they said, ah, a bit of a problem. They're all going with the Russell Brand thing and we can't talk about it. It's an active case.

[00:00:58] And then one of the producers said, it's a shame you can't just go on and say, and the next thing he said, I can't even say that to you now. Even though this is the internet and so in theory I'm not under the same rules. But still, I like turning up on the telly box. I'm probably not going to express an opinion. I can read out the headlines. Russell Brand on trial. He arrives with his entourage, then sat in passively. In the, this feels a bit judgmental. How dare you fidget? There's a trial on.

[00:01:26] In the dock as cut glass KC read out litany of sex charges. You see, they use quote marks, which is so much easier because it's the, in quote marks, predator, not in quote marks, in sunglasses. You just read that out and get yourself sued. What else we got on the front page of the Times? Brand was rude. Okay. Curriculum to give speaking same status as written schools. Oh, I've not seen this one. How did we not spot this one last night?

[00:01:54] Speaking and communication skills will get equal status with reading and writing in the national curriculum as part of a serious overhaul of teaching in England being drawn by ministers. What do they mean by that? Firstly, I do not know the current national curriculum enough to realize was writing considered more important than speaking? Because that feels like, obviously, look what I do for a living. I'm team speaking. And writing is all very well.

[00:02:20] But I do feel it's, yeah, sure, you could get through life handing notes to people. But it is so much better to be able to speak. You go into the bank and hand a note over. They're not even going to read the darn thing. They're going to press that button on the table. He's handed me a note. Why has he got tights on his head? Because that's how I like to. Just don't judge me. Don't yuck my yum. But also, I understand it stresses you out when I'm in the bank. And then I'm trying to hand a note over. They're not reading it. This is why I find it very difficult to fancy a bank teller. I've got a little note for you here. Why are you pressing the button?

[00:02:50] Oh, God. Lucy Powell, the Education Secretary, will announce today that the ability to speak fluently will be hardwired into a revised national curriculum and assessed as part of GCSE exams. GCSE speaking does strike me as it's low-hanging fruit, isn't it? It says me who can't finish a sentence. Maybe I should do a GCSE in it. But do you know what I mean? I've got 10 GCSEs. One of them is in speaking. Are these GCSEs or scout badges? I don't even think they do scout badges for speaking, do they?

[00:03:21] At the same time, Powell wants to cut the amount of academic desktop work and assessments in subjects such as drama, PE, and music to move to more practical. Look, I'll give you that. There's not a lot of paperwork you can do if you're into drama. You are just going to be an annoying person throughout school. There's no paperwork you can do that's going to rein that in.

[00:03:39] Also on the front page, President Zelensky has said he feels betrayed by the United States after access to Elon Musk's satellite communication system was restricted as Russia rained missiles and drones over Ukraine. There's a lot going on here. And I've been part of these discussions on various things where people say we can't be funding blah, blah, blah. You know, they're not in NATO. They're not in NATO. Good point. And every single time I have to bring this up because no one else would.

[00:04:05] There was that Budapest memorandum where Ukraine had nuclear weapons. And as part of an agreement, it was don't worry, you will be provided with security if you give up the nukes. They gave up the nukes. They got invaded twice. And now people are saying, well, you can't use Elon Musk's satellite. That's costing us. But then if you say that out loud on the telly, the tweets you get mainly from bots, bots or bots as well. Why both?

[00:04:33] Zelensky blames Trump for loss of protection from Russian raids is the front page of The Guardian. Just covered that one. The 15-minute trick to make your hair look thicker is on the front page of The Daily Telegraph. Now you tell me. It took me seven hours of getting this operation. Alice Cockrell on the top as well. Don't snigger. My middle name is Fanny. I was still laughing at the first part of your surname, Alice Cockrell. More on benefits at age seven than at age 50. This is a fantastic story.

[00:05:00] This is because seven-year-olds each say terrible bad backs. Oh, I think I was that funny. Maybe that's not it. Shall we read? It's actually the greater increase of people being in receipt of benefits because of conditions like ADHD and behavioral issues. Some would say it's starting to sniff a little odd, this, isn't it? That the newspaper, that's The Telegraph, The Times is running its special investigation into benefits. The Sun keeps running special features on it as well, like welfare slam down, whatever it's called.

[00:05:30] Starting to look a little bit like we are being told the new people to hate are those on benefits. And you could do the maths. And you could work out that the cost to the nation of people in receipt of pip is far lower than you could list people who cost more. However, just to do a full 360 on this 180, if there was nothing to be pointed out that looks stupid, then that would be harder for people to try and sell this narrative.

[00:05:56] Because the fact that more seven-year-olds are in receipt of benefits than 50-year-olds. And our life expectancy has gone up because if you'd have said to me, well, that clearly shows fewer people are living to 50, I'd have believed you. But that's not what's happened. So just because maybe there seems to be a concerted effort to pick the new villain doesn't actually mean we shouldn't be sorting this stuff out. Do you know what I mean? Look at that, managed to upset both at the same time. The Daily Express. Don't silence our fears.

[00:06:25] Piddington women are just being silenced like the victims of grooming gangs. Supporters warn their fears over migrant camp. And it ends there because they don't use a lot of words on the front page of The Express. Big font. Older readership. There's your downside. Brand. I can't read the rest of that on the front page of The Eye. This is an interesting one. In the society section. Midlife Women MOT. Expert advice on your career. Priorities and happiness. Happiness. That's fascinating.

[00:06:55] Because look, I'm very much enjoying my male midlife crisis. Where's no one's going? Are you happy, Steve? No one gives two flips about it. If I look like I'm too happy, there'll be some stress at home. Why aren't you sorting out the bins? You look happy. Video Nasty is the front page of The Star. We've talked about that. Donald Trump's video where he fights the tiger, which is AI, in case you were hoping. Russell Brand on the front page of The Mirror. And actually looking at the rest of them.

[00:07:23] Oh, the only one that's different is The Independent. That has PM. We need The Independent more than ever. Over four decades, it's stood up for democracy, human rights and Britain's place in the world. It's a shame it's not a newspaper then, isn't it? Maybe they should look at getting a printer. Them's your front pages. Let's get inside the news. There's a story about the Royal Mail. They're on the brink. Posties want emergency talks with Royal Mail claiming it's on the brink of collapse.

[00:07:53] Now, previously we've had this story that they've been struggling. I don't know if you've heard about this, but there's this internet thing, which means people aren't sending as many letters as they used to. Which just means you need to change your business model. Universal suffrage, or whatever they call it, is very hard for them. So they wanted to not deliver things on Saturdays and some Sundays. I don't know what they... I'm absolutely fine with it. Do it every other day. To be honest, I'd rather we don't lose the postal service. Because every so often, you don't want to visit someone for their birthday.

[00:08:22] Instead, you'd like to... Because we still really can't send e-cards. Everything else you can do on the internet. An e-card... No one opens up an email and goes, oh, there's a picture of a card you could have bought me. Oh, thanks for that. And until we fix that, we do need the postal service. But feel free to only do it like a couple of times a week. Just really consolidate how much junk mail I get. It's fewer trips to the recycling for me. Here's the most unsurprising news of the day.

[00:08:48] Half of England's town halls say the state of their major roads has got worse in the past few years, according to data. No! No! Councils are required to carry out regular surveys of the road and grade them. Red, amber or green. Well, that's just confusing. Don't do that near roads. And now 45% of councils report a rise in stretches of a road being classified as red. Honestly, there are so many roads.

[00:09:14] Look, I drive all over the place with doing stand-up comedy, so I guess I do more miles than the average person. I cover more area, I suppose. If you do the same route back and forth and you've got a good route, you'll be happy. See, the number of miles I put in, my reflexes have never been sharper. The fact that... Because in the old days, you'd be driving and you'd kind of trust the road to still be there if you weren't really looking at the actual road, if you were looking ahead at the cars. Now, you're going to be looking down there.

[00:09:39] Because there might just be a pothole, you know, when you see one and you think, oh, and if you don't swerve fast enough, you hear that thud. It's not like a dumm. It's a bong. You feel it right up your chassis. Oh. The number of times I've had one of those and the next thing you know, you arrive with a flat tyre and you can't pump that bad boy up. Oh, you bent me out. You bent me rim. Oh, you know where you go bang and you feel it and it thuds and you're like, oh, right on the rim.

[00:10:07] I should stop talking because we all know I'm heading towards a joke that we shouldn't be doing. Have you noticed that weather forecasts are getting better? More accurate, I mean. Not better. It's not as though they're going. Lovely weather. But weather forecasts are getting better thanks to AI. Now I say it out loud, it makes sense, doesn't it? New machine learning has broken records for the weather forecasting for the last two to six week time periods in emergency planning. Oh, I see. Emergency planning, right?

[00:10:33] Because I was thinking, yes, it will make sense that the weather forecast will be more accurate in the future, but with worse weather. Do you know what I mean? All this, oh, it's getting more extreme weather. So the AI will predict it at a time when I actually quite like to be lied to. No, no, make me feel better. Make me think it's not going to be a crazy, crazy next week and I can relax a bit. Darn it. Locals in a British village were hit by 25 earthquakes in a year and they worry that the big one might follow.

[00:11:02] So this is seismologists have been monitoring Silverdale in Lancashire after it was bombarded by tremors and a powerful earthquake enough to shake a bed. It's not that much, is it? I don't want to boast, but I was shaking a few beds in my time. All right. Steady. Facile Tigra. Most recent was September 21 when it was a 3.2 magnitude. That's the thing. This is a logarithmic scale, isn't it? So a 4 is 10 times worse than a 3.

[00:11:31] So if you're putting, oh, we had a couple of 3s. Moaning about being an earthquake hotspot when you're getting loads of 3s is a little bit like, I just think it thumbs its nose at people in Japan. In the same way that if you come into your bedroom and you notice a gecko, right? If you're on holiday in Spain and there's a gecko, don't pretend it's Godzilla. You know what I mean? If you walk in and there's a small lizard and you go, Godzilla, and you panic about it, you are mocking people who have to deal with the real version of this stuff, I think.

[00:12:00] The Rolling Stones are set to release more music, this time for Christmas. Yes. Five extra songs will feature on the Foreign Tongues Loose Lips thing. By the way, in terms of additional songs, you know I keep going on about the fact that I've got an EP on Spotify and Amazon Music. Yeah, sure, yeah, sure. Thanks for bringing it up. You can buy a vinyl version which has a sixth, sorry, I can't count, a fourth extra hidden track. It's not hidden. It's right there on the record. But you don't get that on the Amazon one.

[00:12:30] If you have to buy the vinyl. Do you know how many vinyl ones I've sold so far? Still zero. Still on that big old, big old zero. But when I've saved up enough, I'll buy one myself. But the Rolling Stones have done the same. They've got extra songs. You don't think about Rolling Stone Christmas songs, do you? No, I quite like the idea of it. Because as we talked about yesterday on the show, Brown Sugar, a song all about Demerara. It's the one time a year when you actually start putting that in more foods.

[00:12:59] Yeah, it's in Stolen, isn't it? Whatever they're singing about in the song Brown Sugar, I'm going to put it in my Stolen this year. And I'll bet you'll have a great Christmas. Andy Burnham in the news. Apparently he met Manchester City bosses at least six times as mayor. This is further blowing apart claims that he held just one significant meeting with the club's Abu Dhabi chiefs. And I don't understand enough about football or enough about what the accusations of scandal are. I love an accusation of scandal, though. But I'll tell you who I feel sorry for in this.

[00:13:29] It's Keir Starmer. Because Andy Burnham gets the job as PM. The newspapers look for scandal and they find that he's been meeting with these billionaires and the people behind the club money and all that stuff. And Keir Starmer must be thinking, uh, I had some free glasses. Do you know what I mean? In what could have been a voucher down Specsavers, that was his scandal. And instead, I think he aimed too low in many ways. There's your podcast done for another day. We'll try and squeeze one of these out tomorrow.

[00:13:58] So get subscribed to wherever you found this. Plus, also, if you look at the social media at Mr. Stephen Allen, there's stuff on there. Oh, I've sold some more copies of my book. Mmm. Don't worry. Not a lot of reading involved. It's the adult coloring in book Stephen Allen's Almost Colored In. Is still available because there's no reason for it not to be available. No one's tried to stop me yet. And, yeah, I checked on the stats. Sold a couple more of those. But, as I said, how many vinyl songs have I, how many copies, vinyl copies of my EP have we sold?

[00:14:27] Still that big round number of zero. And that's absolutely appropriate for it. Track me down on socials for more on that. At Mr. Steve N Allen. YouTube.com forward slash at Mr. Stephen Allen for the video streaming, chat about the news as well. Have yourself a good one. 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?

[00:14:58] Visit Podomity.com.