Tom Cruise Knows He’s Annoying

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[00:00:28] Hello, I'm Steve N Allen and welcome to Steve N Allen Almost Daily. Yep, hello, welcome to the podcast that gets you fully up-to-date with the news on a day that seems to still be. The main news is the fact that Sydney Sweeney did an advert with no pants on. I don't know why I don't get... I suppose it's because of this, look, I'm doing a whole podcast with no pants on. And no one's making a big deal out of that. Let's look at the front pages. We start with the Financial Times, which we rarely do because often it's boring.

[00:00:58] But fresh test for Healy, a state pension poised to cross income tax threshold. This is exactly the story that we predicted on this podcast. I know. Every so often you think, this podcast is a bit of a silly look at the news with an idiot who plays the ukulele every so often. Yes. And, not but, but and. We actually spotted this one. Here's the theory again then. Because there's going to be an increase to the basic amount of pension, it will go over the amount that you can earn before you start paying tax.

[00:01:26] And a pension should never really be taxed. Otherwise, what are we faffing around? You've got the state giving you money and then taking some back. You can't just say no pensions are taxed. Otherwise, that becomes a bit of a faff for people who are earning absolutely loads and get the state pension. Even though there must be something you could do about that. But my theory is still this. Whatever the basic pension is, that should be the amount before you start paying tax. That should be the basic rate of tax. So there's your fresh test for Healy. If he's not sitting around in a pub testing his knickknacks.

[00:01:57] Getting your scampi fries out in the local boozer. No, mate. Listen to this podcast. Yes, it's mainly an idiot with a ukulele, but every so often. We were ahead of the curve on this one. The front page of The Eye. Russian spies recruiting UK teenagers. Yet again, another job I won't get because of my age. British children are being offered money, guns and training to make explosives and poisons investigations discover. In a troubling escalation of the Grey War.

[00:02:25] True, but we do need to consider this story the next time someone talks about the number of neats we have in the UK. The young people today, they're not in employment, education or training. Well, some of them are in training. To make poisons for Russia, yes. But... Front page of the... What should we do next? The Metro. Zap. And zap the boat's storm. What? Farage accused of sick stunt as party launches bitter fun arcade star.

[00:02:55] Oh, this is very much copying what Donald Trump does on the White House website. You can do like a catch a migrant game over there. A video game launched by Reform UK in which players bash into migrant dinghies in the sea and send them back to France has been dismissed as a dehumanizing gimmick. Here's the problem, right? I mean, maybe, yeah. But because you've used dehumanizing, you've made this issue subjective. Some people might consider it dehumanizing. Some people won't. The ones who do, do. The ones who don't, don't.

[00:03:24] And they'll never see eye to eye. There'll be no discussion that will move anyone's mind from the two positions. The word gimmick. Sitting there, being buried under dehumanizing. And that's the important one. If you're a political party wanting to be taken seriously, should you be vibe coding games on Claude and Release? I'm guessing that's why they did it. I also realize I vibe coded a game about climate change. Maybe I should shut up because I did exactly that. But then I'm not trying to be a serious political podcast.

[00:03:53] No, I'm not being a political party. I am being a serious political podcast even with the ukulele because I am better at economics than John Healy. But he knows Nick Nax better than I do. Daily Express. Cot cams after complete failure to protect babies. Yeah. So cot cameras will protect babies in neonatal units after an inquiry found three victims of killing nurse Lucy Letby could have been saved. Yes, of course. You've got body cams on people who collect bins these days.

[00:04:22] Literally when I do the video version of this podcast, we're sat around here with three good cameras. But then I've got another three, probably four actually, four just stupid old cheap webcams. So you can do silly little angles. If this podcast, if this serious political podcast can have some cheap cameras just in case, just in case, in case is the little silly thing I need to film, then we should be having them for proper things.

[00:04:48] Front page of the Independent, even though it's not a newspaper, also goes with the Lucy Letby story but has a picture of Prince William. William launches £250,000 fund to revive Dartmoor Village. Wow. I didn't realise Dartmoor Villagers were the epicentre of all that was wrong with the UK. Is he? That's not technically in the Cotswolds, is it, Dartmoor? It's on Dartmoor. I don't really know. I just think they're slowly laying claim to areas.

[00:05:16] Like Prince Harry's got certain parts of the Cotswolds. Now it looks like William's moving into Dartmoor. Someone's going to make a push on Exmoor at some stage. This is like the olden days, isn't it? Honestly, this podcast does predict things that come true. At some stage there will be a battle and there'll be a schism in the country and they'll both get to be the king of a different region. It's happened in the past, so it could happen again. We've got a football story here, so I don't care. But footballer pleads guilty over a £270,000 car crash.

[00:05:45] That's £20,000 more than the amount of money that will rescue a Dartmoor village, in case you're interested. Footballer Raheem Sterling, which tells you the denomination we're talking about, admitted dangerous driving and possessing nitrous oxide after crashing his Lamborghini. It's just turned to page seven for the full story, but I've got no intention of doing that. So he's on the nitrous oxide rather than the car. What an idiot. Listen, I only know from watching Fast and the Furious,

[00:06:13] but you've got an option between you giggling your tits off or the car going faster because you've got knocks like Vin Diesel. And he's sitting there laughing, honestly. The Guardian has... What's this going on? NHS faces changes after devastating Let Me Review. Yeah, webcam's good. Reform leader in Wales stands down after arrest. The leader of Reform UK in Wales is standing down from the role

[00:06:39] after he was arrested and bailed on suspicion of assault and controlling or coercive behaviour. This is an issue of vetting, isn't it? It's all very well having £72 million in your back pocket or your front pocket, but you've got to check who you have standing for you. They failed and babies died is the front page of the Mirror. You know what sad story that is. And the Telegraph. Mayors to control water companies. Ooh, this is right on my street. I love having a go at water companies.

[00:07:09] Fears that Burnham's plans to hand powers to new boards will create more red tape. Mayors are going to be given the... Hang on, I'm zooming in on this one. So this one looks too important to just have me try and read the blurred print. Well, I've zoomed in and it's still blurred. Given powers to control water companies under Andy Burnham's plans to increase the state control of utilities. I mean, ordinarily, state control makes me go, are you sure? Because look at the idiots who are doing that. But look at the idiots who are running the water company already.

[00:07:39] I think that's the test, isn't it? You think, well, the state famously does not run things well. But if it can run things better than how badly it's... Post service, water service, these things. Some train services. Yeah, the state messes up, but... It doesn't mess up. It doesn't deliberately plop poos out because it's rained. And then, I'll go back to the front pages. I think we've nearly done them all, haven't we? Oh, the mail. Earl Spencer's bombshell new book is stolen.

[00:08:09] Copies of Earl Spencer's sensational book about Princess Diana have been stolen from a lorry just before its exclusive serialisation in the Daily Mail. Oh, well, look, I won't say that's not true because I don't want to be sued. But I will say, if it were made up, that would be a great way of the front page of the Daily Mail promoting its own serialisation. So that's something to think about. Who have we got here? Daisy Edgar. Edgar Jones, the Premier of Sense and Sensibility, wearing a dress.

[00:08:39] That's front page news. If she was wearing no dress, that would be a row about sports betting online. The right to work from home boosted under labour plans. I used to like the idea of that, but I presumed people would actually work. But I also work from home. Maybe I should back out of that debate. And failure... Oh, the Lucy Letby story. We have done the front pages. An interesting mix today. Let's get inside the news and find out more about hippie crap. I mean, find out more about the rest of the news. Grocery price inflation.

[00:09:09] Just when we were having a good time. In the news, grocery price inflation sped up in August. Amid signs that the cost of living crisis is altering household spending choices. Yeah, yeah. So supermarket costs went up 22, sorry, 2.3% a year following August drop to 2.1%. I mean, look, I'm not sure I'd mathematically be able to work out the difference without a calculator. Everything just seems to be getting more expensive. But it is true.

[00:09:35] One of the things that's changed how I shop is which items have got the security tag on. Have you noticed? Because in the old days it was razor blades. What else is expensive? Baby formula. Which no one needed both, did they? Not many people need to shave a baby. And then, but these days, there's a security tag on the flipping mild cheddar that I buy. Have I given away too much that I buy mild cheddar? Hang on, let me pretend. There's a security tag on the mature cheddar that I buy. Like a man.

[00:10:06] Mature cheddar and razor blades are the key to being a man. I'm not on baby formula and mild cheddar like a baby. But it just puts me off buying cheese. Because you know it's not going to get deactivated. And you walk through the thing, beep, beep. You're worried you're going to get strip searched over a mild or mature cheddar. Do you know what I mean? You probably don't know what I mean. A little bit of entertainment news, why not? Tom Cruise is in the papers. He's been interviewed in GQ and he's admitted that he's a nightmare to work with. Thanks, Tom. But I think we already knew that.

[00:10:36] But bless you. In an interview, he says, look, I work hard and people that work with me, they know the rumors are true. He says, even when I was a kid, they were like, come on, Tom, you're so intense. So he gets the fact that he's a bit, you know, not necessarily the full sandwiches to make up a picnic. You know what I mean? But just because he's so, he's absolutely so intense. Bless him for admitting it. I don't know if this makes a difference.

[00:11:04] I imagine that if you're working with Tom Cruise, you'd be willing to, because it's just that one job and you're just going to get really famous. I do think, though, that possibly, you know, the other rumor about him is that he does all of his own stunts. Maybe that's not true. Someone misheard the actual rumor about him. Bit of a stuntman, that man. What? Sorry, what was that? Oh, no, I said, I said, you do your own stunts, Tom. And that's how that rumor caught on. Makes sense now, doesn't it? Love this story. It's about AI.

[00:11:32] And by the way, I watched a documentary on AI, so I'm slightly more positive about it. In this documentary, they were saying, yeah, like everyone's saying it's a terrifying threat to humanity, but it also might solve all disease. So, you know, cheer up. But this one is interesting. A kill switch to pull the plug on dangerous AI should be mandatory for companies. An anthropic co-founder has recommended. The idea that there should be an ability to turn off AI in case anything goes wrong, and it should start to be installed.

[00:12:02] And I read that and thought to myself, you haven't been doing that already? What? When I did CDT GCSE at school, we were taught that any, like the lathe, had to have an isolator switch on it. They've built in a kill switch for a lathe, and yet they've been making AI going, that's, leave it, see what happens. You fools, have you never seen a film? I often think that space news is a little bit pointless because it never really impacts our life, right?

[00:12:29] Whatever we think of Jupiter, it's not going to change what you do tomorrow. And so there's one of these here. It's a Venus story, if you're interested. Venus may have swallowed its own moon. I feel like that some days. You know what? It's often carbs, isn't it? Oh, when you have to do the belt a couple of notches up. Oh, but anyway. This is according to astronomers. New research suggests that the slow rotation of the Earth's twin could have caused its one-time satellite to spiral back into it.

[00:12:58] But that's the thing. Moons come from the thing, doesn't it? Our moon comes because we were smacked by a comet and a chunk fell off. Well, if that's how Venus's moon was formed, swallowing its own moon was actually just putting it back where it belonged. It's like when you're about to put a shirt in the wash and you find a five-pound note in the top pocket and you think, oh, I'm up there. And you're not. It was yours all along. It's only right that you've got it back.

[00:13:25] I've really tried to make this Venus story relatable, and I'm not quite sure I managed it. I'm ready for some more bad news. Sorry, it's not positive in the papers today. Get ready for a year of potholes. Drivers have been warned to get ready for a pothole epidemic. The hot summer baked the roads. And the REC said that UV radiation combined with the absorption of greater heat from the sun caused the surface to become brittle, brittle.

[00:13:54] And then when we get rain and a bit of freeze-thaw weathering, there's going to be more potholes. I don't know, man. This was already a bad year for potholes. Earlier in the year, I was driving down the A5 in London. I'd done a bit of work in London. And there was a pothole that was so big and so wide that another pothole had formed in it. It was a double pothole. It was getting down to where the cables are level. And I do think at some point, if there's enough potholes,

[00:14:22] all the roads will just be like two foot shorter and level. Maybe we just let it happen. It will hopefully mean flatter roads just because everything will be weathered away. And it also means that, what's his name? Tony Robinson and the time team. They've got less to dig. Start in a pothole. The pothole's done about three feet of the work for you. Sports news. Not really sports. Then again, the advert with Sydney Sweeney is not really about sport, but apparently she's been slated for defaming sportswomen.

[00:14:52] It's not an advert for sports. It's an advert for betting. Why isn't she being accused of over-sexualizing bookmakers? But that's a different thing. And the story I want to bring you is this one. Wayne Rooney said he was spooked by ghosts while he was trying to sleep. I mean, no. But I'm just thinking, if Wayne Rooney, who's 40. Wow, I feel old. We know one thing about Wayne Rooney. He went through that phase where he rather famously found older ladies attractive.

[00:15:22] Does he find ghosts too old or even more attractive than the ladies he've, you know? No, he'd be like, ooh, she was born in the 1800s. Is that how he does it? I don't know. That'll be your podcast done then. Getting you up to date with a slice of today's news. Want some more tomorrow? Well, good. Because that's exactly what I plan to do. Get subscribed to wherever you found this podcast or wherever you find your podcasts. If you stumbled across this in a different place, feel free to go to your favorite podcast provider and search for me there.

[00:15:52] Track me down on social media at MrStevenAllen. And until next time. Thank you for listening to Stephen 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.