People looked at the Sun, duh!

[00:00:00] Hello, I'm Steve N Allen and welcome to Steve N Allen Almost Daily. The podcast that gets you all of the news straight in your ears on a day when some people are opening their A-levels. Good luck with that. Some people are opening their T-levels, whatever they are. Back in the day I got I-levels. It went do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do. Is that, was it called I-level, that theme song? I hope so, otherwise that pun does not work. Let's do the front pages.

[00:00:30] I looked it up. Yep. Theme tune to Van der Volk, eye level. I knew the Joe. I should go with my instincts. Of course it would work. Right. Your front pages for Thursday, the 13th of August. Rewilding. Link to record fires is the front page of the Daily Mail. So you may have thought that all the wildfires that have been going on, 1,017 wildfires, although on the front page they do say 1,017 infernos. I think if there'd been that many infernos, we'd have heard about it.

[00:00:59] There'd been a couple of biggies, but 1,017 infernos? I think we'd all be gone. But one of the reasons why there's some wildfires is because of the rewilding efforts because then you let it grow wild, it matures, it gets dry, it becomes like tinder, and then it gets set fire to. Now admittedly, one of the reasons it gets set fire to is people with their disposable barbecues, and I'm all for banning those.

[00:01:24] But just for balance, I'm all for banning real barbecues as well. I don't see the flipping point of it. We as a society have developed to such a level of technological advancement that we can, we've got microwaves to cry out loud, we've got cooking technology that understands the quantum nature of vibration and spin of molecules. And yet on a sunny day, me want fire, me cook burger on fire. No thanks. Why? You don't do this in any other thing.

[00:01:53] You don't like good weather, and on a good weather day, I won't go to the GP, I'll just use leeches. Do you know what I mean? We don't need to go backwards just because there's nice weather. So I'm all in favour of it. Andy Burnham, ban him if you want. It is quite nice that Andy Burnham wants to ban barbecues, the opposite of nominative determinism. The front page of the star, eclipse, but actually this is talking about the by-election, for some reason, which is nice because every other front page goes on about the eclipse. Do you really care? I know it looks,

[00:02:24] it looks great in the pictures because they've got the proper filters and stuff. As an actual human, you can't look at it, you're not allowed to look at it. There are other ways of viewing it, none of which are as good as looking at a picture of it. Last night I was looking at the eclipse using my phone, and I realised, do you know what? This phone would also just show me a picture from the internet of eclipses. Eclipse-I, whatever the plural is. I know, I'm out of step with everyone. Everyone seems to love an eclipse. But then people used to love eclipses back in the days when we were cavemen, when we were like,

[00:02:53] me, use fire, make burger. I've already done burgers. Me, use fire, make steak. Ooh! Something, the wolf god's not happy, he takes sun away. So maybe I'm just expecting too much from society. The Daily Telegraph goes with, Burnham prepared to spend more on housing asylum seekers. Yes, he's willing to spend more money to house them in posh people's areas. Look, The Daily Telegraph is trying to make this seem

[00:03:21] like it's an ideological attack on posh people, that the government will spend more money. But actually, some of the people voting for the policies that leave us with a migrant problem are those living in leafy areas, and other areas have to deal with it. So actually, they might be onto something. Look, if everyone takes a fair share, this is the argument about nations across Europe should all take their fair share. So surely counties and areas within the county should all take their fair share. Just because you've got a fancy house, doesn't mean you shouldn't end up having to be

[00:03:51] next to some asylum base. We'll see how that goes. And, front page of the Daily Express, using stairs may cut risk of early death. As in, if you walk up them, yes, it reduces by something like 20-something percent the risk of an early death. I guess that's because if you exercise more, you're healthier. There's a slight increase of if you fall down them, that's not good for you. But it's offset. That's what we've learned here. You're better off

[00:04:20] walking upstairs, risking the falling down, but doing better with your thighs. The thigh is a good muscle, by the way. So this is what this is really about. Obviously, walking around is better than not walking around. We kind of know that. But the thigh is a good muscle. ASMR. But we've known there was a study a while ago, a couple of years now, that worked out by standing, like not sitting down, is good for you. It means you live longer. So I'd just like to pay tribute to the good work of Southern Rail

[00:04:50] that did a lot for me back in the day to make me stand up. Not that I wanted it, but there you go. Front page of The Guardian, PM vows to tackle climate as nurses warn of heat toll. Not just the people going to see the nurses because of the heat, but also because I guess it's sweaty work being a nurse, a sweaty nurse. You don't want to know what I was Googling for when I found this story, but I imagine it is hard work. We've invented air conditioning. Why would you not use it?

[00:05:20] Category C jails could be upgraded to ease the crisis is also on the front page of The Guardian. She would delve in and find out a little bit more about this story. Ministers are examining a possible upgrade of security at men's category C prisons and women's prisons to deal with an overcrowding. Isn't that interesting? That you need to upgrade the security at women's prisons. Do we not have any secure women's prisons? We just presume what? They're no good at dealing with locks. Oh, can you get someone to fix it?

[00:05:49] Is that what this story is about? Good. No, it makes sense. Yeah, yeah. I didn't realize we could just use our current prison estate and just put better locks on it. But while we're at it, there'll be a knock-on effect. Surely some low-category prisons, we could just use premier-ins, couldn't we? Sometimes it feels like that. The front page of... Where should we go to next? We've done the Express. The Mirror Eclipse. Actually, that uses... That manages to talk about the by-election and the eclipse at the same time.

[00:06:18] And here's blot all the fuss was about. This is a picture of the sun with a bit of moon over it. I know I should care more, but it really is just lining up, isn't it? Have you ever been trying to watch TV and someone's stood in front of it? That is exactly just what happened yesterday. And yet no one started some pagan religion based on someone stood in front of the TV. Anyway, there's your front pages. Let's get inside the newspapers. In Eurovision News,

[00:06:47] top of the news agenda right now, I'm sure we all agree, yesterday they changed their rules. They've now made it so that no nation at war can host. So that bans Israel from hosting it. That's why Ukraine, I suppose, also can't do it, but they didn't when they won the other time. I don't really know if this is a good thing or a bad thing. I mean, it's not going to make a difference, is it? No one's going to be like, we won't start a war. Why not? We can't do Eurovision next year if we do. Then again, would it mean

[00:07:16] you can't have songs that go boom, bang, a bang? No, there's something in that, isn't there? We'll look into it. This is interesting product news. Again, can I get this thing sponsored? No? All right. A student has created a chocolate bar from entirely British ingredients. The first for nearly 100 years. Oh, didn't realize it had happened before. It seems less impressive. But the Cocoa Pods, which was my nickname in one relationship, you don't need to know why, were grown in a climate-controlled

[00:07:46] center. Then they were harvested, the beans were dried in the sun. We get sun these days, I don't know if you noticed. And then crushed into a powder. This is Mara Khan, who's a food security master's student. And honestly, you do a degree in anything these days, can't you? It was mixed with British-grown sugar, I guess from the beet, not from the cane, and milk. All right, well, we've definitely got some of that. And it was mixed and then heated and made into six bars. Oh, just when I thought, like, oh, there's a whole product, there are six bars worth,

[00:08:17] which for me is like an emotional afternoon. No, no, we need to be producing more of that for me to even pay attention. I'd be interested if this news doesn't, like, cause some sort of court case. The BBC has apologised after the viewers said they could not understand the hard accent of a Scottish weather presenter, Judith Ralston, is, and I even rolled the R's there, look how it's got me. Um, she's a regular north of the border, um, but spent a week working nationally from London.

[00:08:46] And people complained, it's fascinating, my theory was, like, the BBC has lots of Scottish accents on it and I thought it was because people in England rarely complain about hearing a Scottish accent, whereas people in Scotland feel more oppressed by hearing too many English accents. You know, I've talked about this back when I worked at the BBC. I think it's fascinating that it was a hard accent. These days you can kind of put subtitles on, but aren't subtitles done by some sort of computer recognition thing? So they probably just went offline when she was on. Um, or is it, is there some sort of cognitive dissonance

[00:09:16] seeing a Scottish person talking about the sun? You know, like the Inuits have 17 words for snow. It feels like the Scottish shouldn't have a word for sun and maybe that's, is that what sits as weird? I don't know, but at some point there's going to be a court case. And I would turn up and watch, but I wouldn't understand what's going on or something like that. In what has to be the most predictable and yet somehow shouldn't really happen story of the day, here's the headline. Britons complain of agonising eye pain after staring directly

[00:09:45] at the solar eclipse without glasses. Well, the good news is you'll need glasses now. do we not already know not to stare directly at the sun? I know, who is it? The band The Seahorses did a song Blinded by the Sun or something like that. That wasn't an advice guide on what to do if there's an eclipse. We know that the rule is you don't stare at the sun even during an eclipse because the sun it really is quite powerful. I don't know if you've ever seen it before

[00:10:13] or been in it but it really has quite a lot of oomph and I think it's just that there are a certain subset of people who hate being given a rule so much that they will deliberately go against it. Somehow this was made worse by lockdowns and now people reading the news we're being told not to stare at the sun. The government telling me not to and that's what's happened with those people. Well

[00:10:43] in animal news good news actually if you fancy going up to Chester Zoo in I'm guessing Chester where a rare baby Indonesian Babirusa also known as a pig deer has been named Rana it's made its debut congratulations if you want to go and see one of these things I just think it's a bad name it's like sea cow isn't it like manatee makes more sense we should use the fancier name not the other one because the other names just going to lead to confusion you take your other half to Chester Zoo

[00:11:13] oh what's that over there it's a pig deer how I don't you know what I mean she's going to get confused that's not a pig there's no need to be so over familiar with me I know a pig by now and don't try and get around me with your charm I mean it is worse if you go and see a manatee and she says what's that it's a sea cow I'm not talking about the sea and how dare you watch out where you go on holiday there's a new story out today of a British couple who were stuck in Sicily after Mount Etna erupted yeah should have seen it coming in a sense

[00:11:43] what's this Evgenia Filomonova I may have got some of the syllables wrong there 39 I nailed that part and her husband were there for a friend's wedding but the flight was cancelled when there was an eruption even I went to Sicily and you see Mount Etna and there's a bit of you that thinks is this the dumbest thing I've ever done oh look Les what do you want to do a day out going for a little hike up an active volcano you think about it no you shouldn't in the same way that if ever you

[00:12:13] go around Pompeii you know they've got the people who were turned into ash and you kind of think oh look at these imagine being that close to a volcano whilst you're also stood right there just whenever you go to Pompeii make sure you don't hold any silly positions because that's how you'll be remembered forever this might be positive news let's find out shall we future generations will see one pound in every five of their taxes going on paying debt interest in just 50 years

[00:12:43] doesn't seem like it's a positive does it so I'm here to try and make it seem like a positive one pound in every five will be simply servicing the debt of the nation but due to the massive inflation rate that pound won't be worth as much as it was did that cheer you up I'm not sure if it was meant to actually I know I'm not the biggest victim of the drought but it hit me today in a way that I didn't expect we had a leak in our guttering now I know you're thinking how did we manage to survive it's been fine

[00:13:12] and we got someone to come round to try you know put some sealant I'm not getting up the others oh I wouldn't be able to cope but then he came round and he said right I think it's done all you've got to do is wait until it rains and then let me know and I get the feeling that it's not going to rain for so long by the time we work out if that gutter actually is no longer leaky he'll have closed his business and started again under a pseudonym do you know what I mean there's absolutely no way oh well but the weather's been nice that's the podcast done with all of the news we

[00:13:42] could scrape from today's journalism for another quick news fix get tomorrow's podcast subscribe to wherever you found this thing and it'll plop into your inbox giving you a quick update on all the news you could possibly need you can also track me down on social media at mrstevenallen specifically youtube if you consider youtube to be a subset of social media i think it is um forward slash at mrstevenallen so youtube.com forward slash at mrstevenallen for a late night stream thursday at 10 is when i'll be doing one of those

[00:14:11] other than that till next time thank you for listening to steven 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 you