The Banks?! Not The Banks!

[00:00:00] Hello, I'm Steve N Allen and welcome to Steve N Allen Almost Daily. Hello, welcome to the podcast that gets you up to date with the news, including that seems to be the top story today, is that John Healy, Chancellor, is looking like he's going to add an additional tax to the banks, bank shares because of this, but just a brief second to say, won't somebody think of the banks? Not the banks. Not the banks.

[00:00:27] I don't think anyone else is thinking that, so I thought we'd be the first podcast to bring it to you. I am old enough to remember when we bailed out the banks and they still continued to chain the pens to the desks like we were going to rob from them. So this one's fine with me. To the front pages. Let's walk through together as this first glance at the front pages of the 16th of October, and I think it's a Friday as well, the Times flatlining, why flat sales are falling.

[00:00:58] Because no one wants them, because the leaseholder thing, isn't it? Because you can't rent them out as much because the renters thing, and if you buy one, someone else basically still owns it because the lease thing. Get it sorted, government. Paul Bettany, my brother's death changed my life. It's unbelievable that, look, I've been interviewed because of family death in my time. Don't get it. There's the interview that I did, like, the day after my dad died in COVID on BBC Radio Nottingham. I listened back to it a while ago, and I think maybe I shouldn't have done it.

[00:01:28] But I will say this. At least I was on topic talking about the news that, you know, he's plugging Vision Quest or whatever it's called. He's plugging a Disney Plus Marvel thing, and they're asking about his brother. Front page news, though, on the Times. Hospitals to place trans women on male wards. Let's have a look. NHS change welcome as shift back to reality. Why are they deciding to quote Eminem? Let's have a look.

[00:01:58] Hospitals have been ordered to bar transgender women. Well, that's the thing, though, isn't it? There is a difference between barring transgender women from female wards and putting them on male wards because you're presuming that there might be things that aren't – there might be rooms, individual rooms that, therefore, are neither one nor t'other. It's not a male room or a female room until someone goes in it. The NHS said that from now on, trans people should be accommodated in line with their biological sex,

[00:02:27] reversing the previous policy that they should be placed on wards in line with their gender identity, pronouns, and the way they dress. That one's a sticky or wicked of gender identity you can make a case for, but I wear some shirts that people call blouses. I wouldn't be like, hey, why am I in this? Why am I in here? Don't get me wrong. This ward smells nicer than the other one. Hospital wards are different. The idea about toilets, I think there is another factor that people are ignoring,

[00:02:53] and that is the gents is just the worst place in the world, isn't it? Oh, which toilet do you want to go in? That one over there with the cubicles, it smells nice. Or the one with literal waz on the floor? You'll never find a more villainous hive of, whatever it is, hive of villainy and wee-wee. These are not the cubicles you're looking for. Yeah, I knew we'd get to Star Wars when we started this topic. Um, brand, what? Oh, no, no, it's brand as in the surname, not the concept of the thing you're known for.

[00:03:22] We'll leave that on there for legal reasons. The Daily Mail. There's a picture of Meghan. I'm going to mention it now, because if I get to put Meghan in the title of this podcast, people will... You just get more clicks. What? Why do people keep picking on Meghan? I don't know. The internet just, like, pays off. If I do a web stream that includes any small bit of news about Donald Trump, Meghan, and then there might be, like, another one I can look out for. Sydney Sweeney's a classic one. If ever there's a live stream where those three people are in the news, I'm hitting some big numbers.

[00:03:49] Um, walkabout, a smiling Duchess of Sussex in Nottingham yesterday during a non-royal visit with husband Harry. I mean, I do non-royal visits. It feels like that's not worth mentioning. Most visits are non-royal, aren't they? Here's a deal for you. If it's a royal visit, call it so. If not, I'm just going to presume most visits are non-royal. Dumb and dumber, Education Secretary told children will be the losers. As she says, speaking skills will be as important as reading and writing.

[00:04:19] In new GCSEs. Well, we talked about this yesterday. Speaking is important. You need to be able to do that more than you need to be able to write. Ideally, and I don't think this is a high bar to try and get you to jump over. I'd like kids to be able to do both. Speaking and reading and writing. The main three. Stop calling them the three R's. For a start. Because, well, speaking was never one of those. Recital? No, that's not that. Um, but, and obviously the spelling's wrong with writing and arithmetic.

[00:04:49] What a dumb mnemonic. Um, but. No, I've got no idea what I was saying here. Speaking is good. I really should do this GCSE in speaking. It'd probably help this podcast. Front page of the star is about Russell Brand. So we'll move on. The Guardian. How pot auteur shy girl slogged her way to the top. Hey, listen. Today's a big day for me. My EP, available on Spotify and out on vinyl. It's getting its first radio airplay. Official actual radio airplay.

[00:05:19] As in this afternoon on a DAB station. It's on many a multiplex as well. It's not just one little tiny one. That song gets played. Yeah, yeah. It's on my radio show. Don't look behind the curtain. I'll be playing my song. Meaning, officially, my EP gets radio airplay. Will it change my life? God, I hope so. Revealed. Chancellor poised to raise taxes on banks in budget. We've already covered that one. Race row candidate protected by Farage. Shall we zoom him?

[00:05:46] Nigel Farage was told by a senior reform official that he was protecting a high-profile mayoral candidate accused of making racist comments about David Lammy. Oof. An undercover investigation revealed. You've got to think less of someone if they do that. Because it is not like you need to look to race to insult David Lammy. Play the clip of him on Mastermind. We could... He didn't know any of them.

[00:06:15] Who discovered radium? Marie Antoinette? That would have been a very different death. What was the one as well? Which monarch succeeded? Henry VI. And he goes, Henry V. There's very few wrong answers. Obviously, there are loads of wrong answers. But there are some good guesses. And there are a handful of stupid guesses. And he picked one of them. That's not a race thing. That's a can't-do-mastermind thing. So, yeah. I think less of whoever that was. Shall we find the name? No, better not because we get sued. Trump drops plan to broadcast execution.

[00:06:46] Good. So, you must... To bring up to date on this story, there's an execution. It's an army-based thing so they can use a firing squad. And they were going to live stream it. Some sort of pay-per-view deal, I imagine. But Trump has vetoed it. But I think that's good, given that as a nation, it doesn't seem to be able to do executions very well. If I'd just botched something, I wouldn't live stream my next attempt at it. It's going to go well. At the very least, I'd put it on a delay.

[00:07:14] I'm not actually giving him good tips, should I? Madness at 50 is the interview inside the eye. We thought we would only last a week. Oh, check me out on social media. I did a version of a Madness song about the fact that Suggs has got new knees. Energy bills set to double rise in the new year. Oh, flipping heck. Households will lose VAT relief on electricity as Chancellor refuses to commit to extending PM's cost of living measure.

[00:07:42] I thought that was a done deal. I thought that was baked in. Oh, I'm mad for it. We'll get rid of VAT off your energy bills. And I thought that was... Oh, thanks. Not, oh, we'll do it for a few weeks. You get... Healy plans tax rate on banks. It's on the front page of The Telegraph. What else have we got on here? The non-royal visit makes it to the front page. Britain to send Ukraine more storm shadows. Sounds like a superhero. It's not, is it? It's a missiely thing, isn't it?

[00:08:11] Britain will send Ukraine additional long-range missiles. Oh, I know the flipping... I'm not even like a manly man, but I'm happy when I know what type of ordnance this stuff is. Oof. The Telegraph understands that the decision to give Kiev more cruise missiles was made when Andy Byrne and Matt Frey welcomed Vladimir Zelensky to No. 10 earlier this week, No. 10 South. It's nearer. He's at war. Don't make him travel all the way up to the northern one. The two leaders discussed Russia's attack

[00:08:40] on civilian and energy infrastructure and how the UK could use long-range missiles to support Ukraine ahead of winter. I get in trouble on the internet for this, but I want this to... Can someone just kick Russia's backside on it? You can't set the precedent that, yeah, go and grab a bit of land. Go on, like the olden days. What we'll do about it? Nah, not much. Yeah, do something. Do much about it. Otherwise, they'll be annexing the Isle of Wight, which is not as bad as you think, but still.

[00:09:08] David Lloyd-Gymes bans men from spa sessions. What? David Lloyd Clubs has begun excluding men from part of its gyms to accommodate women who feel uncomfortable using shared spaces, including for religious reasons. I've not done a spa session, but do you do a lot of praying when you're getting waxed? The gym has introduced weekly women-only spa sessions following feedback from female members who said they felt...

[00:09:38] This is annoying. You can make your argument about the front-page NHS story, but why am I now not allowed to do a thing? What? Now, admittedly, I wasn't going to go to the spa. I don't go to a gym. I was thinking of attending a gym. Not because I should get in shape. I should, but because I saw that SNL clip, and I was like, they're dressed like what? Shall I go and have a look? But it turns out, no. One woman dressed in a burkini, full-body swimsuit, said it means a lot for Muslim women.

[00:10:08] Oh, I wanted to go to a spa. Not a spa. Obviously, you can still go down the spa, which is where I go and get me chocolate bars. As long as I've still got access to the spa shop, maybe I ain't going to mind about it. Front page. Oh, I've got to click back onto the main page. The Daily Express, Farage's Fury at small boat sex attack. I'm not going to read the details because it seems grim. I don't think it's going to be that someone attacked a boat like that, which is... You wouldn't not with a rudder, would you?

[00:10:37] With an off-board motor, you'd be a fool to yourself. And the front page of the Mirror is a brand story. I think we've done all that we can manage. Oh, no, it's worthy mentioning the pun on the front page of the Metro. The story is about Russia's diesel deal with America, and the headline is The Access of Diesel. Let's get inside the news. Inside the papers, it doesn't start happy, I'm afraid. R-N-L-I. I always say it slowly because I don't want to get the wrong one. It's so tempting to accidentally do the one about the blind people of the kids, isn't it?

[00:11:06] And you don't want to know, especially with this story, you don't want to start confusing them. The R-N-L-I... Royal... We'll find out. The lifeboat one, isn't it? The boaty one. Hit by thuggery and intimidation. The volunteers face from anti-migrant protesters. Has been blasted by the charity regulator. Yeah, yeah, no kidding. It is one of the dumbest self-defeating things ever, isn't it? The R-N-L-I, the lifeboats, have been saving people at sea,

[00:11:33] some of whom have been trying to make it to the UK on a boat. Therefore, R-N-L-I, let's hate them. It is as dumb as saying... In fact, do you know what? I should be careful because this will be a true fact. I can almost guarantee that at some point, the fire brigade would have turned up and saved someone that you'd think shouldn't be here, or someone who is still awaiting processing in the asylum system has been saved by... But that's a fact. We don't want to say it out loud because someone's going to be like, you up! Right!

[00:12:01] And then we're going to get rid of the fire brigade service. Do you not understand how you will be painting yourself in a corner? All of these people, all of these operations... What's the phrase? I don't know why we're... Because they're not businesses, are they? All of these organisations that save people, you'll hate them because they might save someone you don't think should be here. What do you think's going to happen on the day when you've got a fire on your boat? Oof! You've been hoisted by your own petard. Your petard saving operation will not come and find you.

[00:12:30] Look, I'm not watching Celebrity Traitors, so I might be speaking out of turn here, but I think someone's got something wrong. TV maths person, celeb traitor Hannah Frye, has predicted an all-girl final. She said that murdering, quote marks, Rob Beckett was the best night of her life. So she's one of the traitors, and I don't know who else is, but it doesn't matter. Because she thinks, what, she's going to make it through to the final. Come join me over here in the, let's be honest, conversations part of the show.

[00:13:00] You're going to get voted off. People on reality TV do not trust clever people. And you are clever. You're a professor at Cambridge of maths. One of the hardest things to even be a professor in. Do you remember Big Brother back in the old days? Anyone who had like an IQ that would be normal or slightly above, out. By the time it came around to the final, it was amazing. These people, I'm amazed they didn't starve to death. They must have been some sort of easy-to-use tin opener because the kind of people

[00:13:29] who were left in reality TV shows by the end normally aren't troubling Mensa. So we'll see if I'm right or wrong. Got some breaking news. Severe droughts have been declared in parts of England. Do you know what? I was just thinking that today. I was just thinking, oh, isn't it droughtish? I was thinking that as I was dropping the kids off today with the rain slowly soaking through my hat because I didn't get time to pick the right hat. So I wore a cloth baseball cap getting absolutely soaked.

[00:13:58] And my little two-year-old daughter didn't want to wear her hood up. So her hair was getting absolutely drenched. And because someone wanted to move a car this morning, they put their own shoes on. She put some really absorbent ones on. That was a nightmare. My lad, he's got his hood up. He's doing all right. But his book bag slowly getting filled by all the rain. And whilst that was happening, what I could hear the squelching and the moaning and the crying and all that, I did think to myself, oh, isn't it droughty? Oh, ever so dry. Oh, I'm parched. It's arid.

[00:14:27] It's all about an arid land. It comes amid concerns over dwindling reservoirs and extreme dry conditions. Yeah, but I got rained on. I got thoroughly soaked. I buy a newspaper, which if you look at the front page, still has the wet patches from where it dribbled into my Tesco bag. And in that same newspaper, we're in drought. Oh, I'm not sure we hate the water companies enough. We talked about this before, the bizarre graffiti

[00:14:57] that's been happening across the UK. One of them says, Danny Dyer smokes Parma Violet vapes. And weird sentences like that. Well, police now arrested a man after he admitted scrawling a series of surreal TV celebrity-inspired graffiti messages on walls. Northumbria police said that a man, 33, admitted criminal damage. That's the thing, isn't it? If you'd have made it like a water-based thing so it could wash off. I was all for these.

[00:15:25] Ross Kemp dabs Zaflora behind his ears was one of them. Another one said, Annika Rice builds forts with cushions in B&M. Jade Thurwall buys makeup from Poundland. Hey, now, come on. The other ones were fine, but that's getting a bit harsh. Listen, listen. I'm all, we're all having a bit, we've all had a drink, but there's no need to be harsh about that. But now he's been arrested. I guess it was always going to happen.

[00:15:53] For him, the writing's on the wall. That's better. They've done a survey and the average mattress will witness anything. Oh, man alive. Who goes around over that survey? Sarah, excuse me, can you answer some questions for my survey? What was your mattress witnessed? Oof. Oof. Do you want to know? I don't even like the idea of memory foam because I don't want my mattress having flashed. I've been through enough without it remembering it too.

[00:16:22] The average mattress will witness 18 breakfasts in bed, nine food and drink spillages. Now, if you think about that, that's not a good hit rate, is it? 18 breakfasts in bed, it doesn't imply any of the meals are being had in bed. And half of those, nine, I know what half of 18 is, get spilled. No wonder, because I was thinking, only 18 breakfasts in bed, but if you're spilling half of them, you should probably eat downstairs. Absolute mess. This is per year, so 18 breakfasts per year, nine spillages per year,

[00:16:52] and 202 intimate moments in a typical year. Let's look at those numbers again. That can't be right. They, did they get those the wrong way around? The, okay. Still, it explains why they keep knocking over their breakfasts, doesn't it? Congratulations to them. Here's a, I agree with this one. Bathroom selfies are a major turn-off, according to a little study that they've done for Wix for some reason. Oh, I see, because of bathrooms. No, no, I get it. But you know,

[00:17:20] when you see people on social media, on Instagram and whatnot, they've taken a picture of their outfit in a bathroom, and like, oh, looking cute. Oh, I thought it looked cute. Might delete later. All of those things. Hashtag bathroom selfie. Yet, one in six dating app users have got a bathroom selfie. And, if you, look, if you fancy it, it's a little hobby that I like to do. Whenever I see someone who's taken a bathroom selfie, I like to comment underneath it, I'd give it five minutes if I were you.

[00:17:51] Or a phrase like that. Do you know what I mean? Oh, you remember to flush. Something, just to bring into context, you are taking a picture of yourself in the room where people drop the kids off at the pool. And I think if we all did that, we could solve this problem. That'd cheer up Wix, wouldn't it? That's the podcast that happened. There's also a news story we didn't really get time to touch in the podcast, and that's big news for me, but not for anyone else. Yeah, my song has now officially been played on the radio.

[00:18:20] I'm a recording artist. You can find the I'm Tired EP on Spotify by searching for it. Get off your backside, pull your finger out and search for it yourself. What do you expect? A link? There's also the vinyl version. I don't know. It feels like quite a commitment buying a vinyl version of music I produce. I'd be grateful for it, but I'd look at you and be like, are you all right? Are you too much of a Steve enthusiast? Do you know what I mean? I would appreciate the purchase, but I would tell you to just back off a little bit. No, I'm kidding. I'm kidding. Thank you very much

[00:18:50] for downloading this podcast and having a listen. Subscribe and get more of them next week. Just a quick way of getting updated with the news you otherwise might miss in hopefully an easy-to-digest form. I am the sugar rather than the vegetables, which is not good for you. Yeah, that's right, actually. Get yourself subscribed wherever you found this podcast. Have a look at youtube.com forward slash Mr. Steve N Allen for some video content. And until next time, thank you for listening to Stephen Allen almost daily.

[00:19:20] This podcast is part of Podomity, the UK's podcast comedy network. Why not laugh at what else we've got? Visit podomity.com Podomity.com on YouTube.