Yes, Men in Women’s Prisons

[00:00:00] This September, podcasts across the Podomedy Network are supporting Calm's Stay Tuned campaign. Podcasts can be good company, but sometimes people need somewhere to turn. Calm provides free, anonymous support for anyone struggling with suicidal thoughts or affected by suicide. If you can help, £12.20 can cover the cost of answering a potentially life-saving call. You'll find the link to give in the show notes. Thank you for supporting Calm.

[00:00:30] Hello, I'm Stephen Allen and welcome to Stephen Allen Almost Daily. Yep, it's your Almost Daily news podcast on a day when an Amazon Prime aeroplane overshot the wrong way and just crashed. And yet we're letting these people deliver things by drone. Just take a look at that picture again before we think that's a good idea. Right, let's do your front pages. I've not seen these myself, so let's walk through them together.

[00:00:55] The Times today, Britain's third highest taxpayer to leave the country amid budget fears. Yeah, but how much does he have? Do you know what? I think you can change the law, though. We keep sitting around going, well, of course the problem with increased taxation is people. We'll just... We need to go even more farage on that impression. Can we ramp up the farage? Well, the problem with trying to tax well is people just leave. And America seems to have a system where if you leave, you still have to pay taxes back there. Can we nick that?

[00:01:24] It's not a lot that I want to nick from America. That might be the only one. The only... Then again, they sent us Baywatch, we sent them Jedward. No wonder we're amazed we're not at war. Four, by order of the king, never treat Sussexes like royalty. The king has formally confirmed that the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, lovely pub, will not use their HRH titles or undertake any official duties on behalf of the monarchy. Good for the second one.

[00:01:51] Yeah, I mean, I don't actually get two flips. Call yourself whatever. You can buy yourself one of them Lord statuses by buying like a square of land in Scotland. You can do it online, can't you? Where you can buy a small bit of land in Scotland and technically call yourself a Laird or something. Can I buy from one of that? Given that they're not going to be called HRH anymore. Can I buy one and donate it so it would be Laird Harry? Maybe you wouldn't appreciate it. I might do it myself. Kofi.com forward slash Mr. Stephen Allen, buy me a Laird.

[00:02:22] Charles has asked Lord Chamberlain, the head of the royal household, to set out the position in a formal letter to the senior military and government officials. I don't think Harry was going to crop up and be like, hi, by the way, I'm a royal. Could we go and invade there? Do the senior military need to know that these are not officially HRHers? Maybe I don't understand what goes on because I am working class. PM to declare trade ban on settlements in West Bank. Burnham risks retaliation.

[00:02:51] We talked about this on the telly the other day. Remember when Putin used to do things we didn't like and when John Healy was defence, he'd write a stern letter. And I mocked him. Of course I did. But now it's interesting. Why don't we just write a stern letter? Because it's kind of nothing. This trade ban won't change anything that Israel does. There's no decision that Israel is going to be like, ah, but that Andy Burnham guy. You know the guy who's mad for it? Maybe we shouldn't now. Front page of The Mail.

[00:03:19] King puts Harry and Meghan in their place. Now, if that's a headline that also talks about giving them a free house, I will call it clever. But if not, it's just mean. The language is icily formal. But the blunt message is they're still out in the cold. They're the ones who quit, aren't they? We know that they're not working royals. I mean, sadly for them, they're not working royals, even when it comes to Spotify and Netflix. The Guardian.

[00:03:48] UK hardens stance on Israel with ban on illegal settlement trade. We shouldn't be trading in illegal settlements. I'll give you that one. Jaguar Land Rover. This is a harsh one, isn't it? Of all the little bits of good news, 4,000 jobs are going over two years. The decision by the carmaker, which is battling Trump's tariffs. Oh, yeah. And the fallout from the cyber attack. Yeah. I was talking to someone. I was at a gig. And they were in the front row. And I said, where do you work?

[00:04:19] And he said, JLR, Jaguar Land Rover Range Rover. Eh? And I said, you've missed a couple of hours there, aren't you? But he thought Jaguar Land Rover Range Rover, the R was Range, not Rover. I'm not having it. That's not the hot take on it. I was appalled at that guy. The Daily Telegraph. King tells Harry no return to the firm. I can see there's going to be a main thread on these ones.

[00:04:48] Veterans to be mobilized as army gets ready for war. Are we dad's army-ing this one? Britain is planning a major drill to mobilize its army of veterans as it prepares for war. Fair enough, though. They'd do better than I would. Louise Sander-Jones, the Armed Forces Minister. Jones? Stupid boy. Don't tell him your name, Mike. It's revealed. He said, I said dad's army. And it was only a matter of time, wasn't it? Until I ended up saying, one morning Mr. Tickle woke up.

[00:05:16] A cohort of the Strategic Reserve of 95,000 retired troops will be called into action. This is the way we could win this war as long as it happens early enough in the afternoon. Before countdown. Burnham set to inflame tension. That's the Israel story again. We'll outlaw face coverings, says Farage after migrant protest. First, Nigel Farage has called for a ban on all full face coverings in public spaces in the wake of protests by balaclava-clad men.

[00:05:46] I think this is an interesting spin, isn't it? There were the Dover ones and the Portsmouth ones. Some blokes had balaclavas. And the right condemned the wearing of balaclavas because it can be seen as intimidating. Basically, if you're wearing a balaclava, there are three reasons. One, you're being intimidating and don't want your identity known. Two, it's very, very cold. And we have certainly not had that summer, sir. And three, you're on Ski Sunday. And that's actually ending as well, isn't it?

[00:06:13] Big shout out to Chuck Thomas, who's the first person I saw do the joke online saying Ski Sunday has been cancelled. Well, it's been going downhill for a long while. Nice. Writing in the Telegraph, the reform leader said that face coverings, whether gang members balaclava or Antifa mask, were a menace. Of course, there are other face coverings that would come under this law that they've talked about. I'm doing ASMR. That they've talked about recently. Or rather, it came up and then they tried to not talk about it.

[00:06:40] But if you ban face coverings, it sorts out the balaclavas. It would deal with issues of religious stress and would be a nightmare for beekeepers. There are some welders, I imagine, aren't going to be loving this news. But there you go. Raina halts council plan after legal threat. Angela Raina has halted plans for a local government shakeup after legal threats by councils.

[00:07:06] The community secretary told the MPs that she'd paused the abolition of dozens of county and district councils. The, hang on, Raina who was accused of a shambolic U-turn. Hang on, if you wanted to change your mind, don't then criticise the way in which, look, if you want to go in a different direction, don't tut when someone tries a three-pointer. You know what I mean? The cost of the Chagos deal is set to rise to $288 million. Oh, bargain, look at that.

[00:07:34] Don't worry, I'm sure we'll end up somehow paying more to sort out the Falkland situation. Front page of The Star, Bernie in Cop Gun Quiz. This is the ex-Formula 1 boss forced to surrender pigeon shooter from private jet. You can't shoot pigeons from a private jet, can you? They don't fly at that height. I'm no pigeon expert, but I'm fairly sure. What's a pigeon shooter? Should we all have one?

[00:08:03] Why is he carrying a pigeon shooter? Is it he worries about a coup? The Express, don't ignore public anger over illegal migrants. But that's the Tory leader, Kemi, hitting out at Labour's indifference. I hate it when I think I'm talking sense and then a politician agrees with me. But I've often said your definition of popularism is actually identifying genuine problems, but selling snake oil to solve them.

[00:08:33] Vote for me. I'll solve this genuine problem with my magical wand over here. So the second half is the BS. But the first half is the problem that you should solve. Every other political party should be realising they've worked out the genuine issues. How do we solve them properly? Makes sense when I say it like that, but it's icky when people agree with you, isn't it? What have we got here? Port in a storm. As migrant... Oh, this is Portsmouth. Port in a storm.

[00:09:00] Home office blamed over far-right protest as the government warned. 14-hour trip on a mega dinghy. Maybe the first of many. Go round to Portsmouth. Now they try and stop the lifeboats. Protest yobs abuse crews for saving lives. This is where it might kick off. This, then again, then again, maybe they're just beekeepers really angry about what's happening. Because that's...

[00:09:26] You don't want to be arrested for a face covering if you're a beekeeper in what I believe the police would call a sting operation. And finally tonight, beekeepers were arrested. You're up to date with the front pages. Let's get inside the news next. Here's a headline. Train UK staff before migrants. Appeals for low-skilled visas. What? The UK workers should be trained to fill jobs before employers recruit. This is according...

[00:09:55] What does Brits say? Let's read on. I wasn't surveyed about this. But workshops with members of the public were trying to be held in North... Hang on, let's get into the actual meat of the deal here. Participants called for greater emphasis on upskilling of UK residents. I mean, I think I know the argument that they're making. If your economy is based on cheap labour being brought in... I mean, look, they've ignored the word cheap in that, doesn't it?

[00:10:19] Because actually, if what you have to do is train UK unemployed people to do the job, you also need to pay them enough money to do the job, to be willing to do the job. But also enough money so that we don't have to subsidise that wage through the government. If someone's in receipt of benefits and then we give them a job and they're still in receipt of benefits, the government is funding the business, not the people. Can we all agree with that? There are so many people who are receiving some in-work benefit and we're making that seem like we're helping out the people.

[00:10:47] You're helping out the job, the businesses. Some of these would be big corporations who are getting part of the wages that they should be paying for the people doing the work paid by us, the taxpayers, instead. I don't know, some big scam happening there. But it does mean if everyone has to start paying the right amount, it'll trickle down and everything will cost more. So there is that. We've probably been enjoying pretending we're a richer nation than we are because we've been living on some cheap prices thanks to our labour shortage.

[00:11:16] I will say this as well. Some of the jobs will take longer to train than others. Straight after the pandemic, there are issues about the number of lorry drivers who are available because so many lorry drivers that were from the EU or whatever, they went home during the pandemic. They stayed there because of the whole Brexit-y thing and we didn't have enough lorry drivers. So they changed the restrictions so you didn't have to be as good at lorry driving to become a lorry driver. And that probably doesn't seem like the best idea ever, does it? It's a big lorry, you know what I mean?

[00:11:44] I can understand why the idiot on a moped delivering your food doesn't need to be trained. But if you've got like a 16-tonner, you might want to... Then again, we also don't have enough doctors. And I kind of think I could probably do a conversion course. I don't need the full seven years. I have watched all of House. So I imagine there's just some training course I could do in the interim and... Yeah, I'll have a crack at it. Which is not what you want to hear a doctor say, is it? I don't wish to be indelicate. And it's always difficult when you're doing jokes or funny bits about someone who's died.

[00:12:14] Especially when that person was liked. You can kind of do jokes about people who've died who aren't liked. But Jack Osborne believes his dad, Ozzy, is leaving him messages from beyond the grave. Now, I'm going to end up being harsh here because I don't really think we get messages from beyond the grave. And also, I don't think you could really understand a message Ozzy left you when he was alive. So the idea of somehow receiving a message... And you're what?

[00:12:42] You're getting that in a seance or you're watching the static on the TV? That's just the pipes, mate. That's a strong chance that's just the pipes. Female prisons could be converted into male prisons to help with the overcrowding crisis. It makes sense, really. And we've almost brushed up against this on other episodes of the podcast. Because that conversion, I think, is just taking down the sign that's got a picture of like a stick person with a little triangle.

[00:13:12] And instead, you just have two legs and arms. Because it's still a prison, isn't it? The reason it would be inescapable to a woman is not that different to being escapable to a man. They don't put all the keys to the doors just on a really high shelf, do they? Is that how they do it? Just up there. Do they have... Are female prisons different to male prisons? Because the keys that unlock the door are just in a jar. And the women are... No, as soon as you move the men in there... Oh, I'm out. Is that what it is?

[00:13:42] Should we read the story rather than just guess? Prison Minister's Catherine McKinnell is thought to be looking at reducing the number of women in sight... Well, what? No. Wait a minute. There's a lot of free ride happening there, isn't there? Why don't you move some of the women to the other women's prisons to make all of the spare space into one prison? Convert that. In fact, we talked about this. This is what we did talk about on the show.

[00:14:06] We've got spare hotel space because of the hotels that were rented for use in migrant processing facilities. Very much not a popular thing anymore, but the contracts are still in. So we have the hotels. Why don't you put the women in the hotels and the men in the women's prisons? How would you stop the women escaping from the hotel, Steve? You put the little swipe cards in the jars. We've already been through this. Is no one listening? Thump.

[00:14:31] Quick round of guess the end of the sentence, and then I'll say, what were you thinking, you dirty mucky pup? Sir Cliff Richard has covered Harry Styles. Finish that sentence. For his new album. Oh, what were you thinking, you mucky pup? The 85-year-old legend released his 48th studio album. Only number ones. On November 27th.

[00:14:59] Because when you're that age, unless you've been regularly doing the prunes. Oh, that's not right. I mean, no, he's a legend. I'm moving on. Cops are investigating the theft of around 70,000 pints of Guinness. Fear that the stout is being sold on the black market. How have they not done the pun there? That's, oh, that's good. Cheshire police have now recovered two lorries that were stolen in the heist. Wow, an actual heist. Imagine how thirsty you are. You orchestrate a heist for a Guinness.

[00:15:29] But they said that 880 barrels of the booze that they housed is still outstanding. And they've not found it yet. Detective Gary McClatchy said, these are being sold on the black market. So I would urge anyone who has any suspicion. Here's the thing. Remember, I went to university. In first year, we were in the Hunter Court Lodge in whatever it's called, not the lodge. The Hunter Court thing in Birmingham. Near Edgbaston.

[00:15:57] But the university in Edgbaston, Hunter Court was a long old walk. Like half hour walk. Across the road, there was a pub. And we went in there. First day, just a bunch of four studenty lads in these new houses, halls of residence thing. In a pub. And this bloke comes up to us and he said, Do you want to buy any meat? I'm like, sorry, what? Do you want to buy some meat? All right, I've got some meat here. Do you want to buy some meat? Because he was a wizard. No, I'm not sure what accent voice I was going for.

[00:16:23] But he opened his coat up and he had a little foil takeaway thing with a paper lid. You know, like a takeaway thing. And in it was some meat. And so do you know what we did? We bought the meat. Looking back, I wouldn't do that again now. Not because, like, I'm all fancy and I work in the media and I'm earning proper meat money. You shouldn't really just buy meat off someone from out of their coat in a pub. I get, look, and only two of us died. So it's, we did all right.

[00:16:53] But it's even harder to sell on the black market Guinness. How are you going to walk into a pub and say, Do you want a Guinness? Because people will think you're offering to buy them a drink. Also, you've got a Guinness under your coat. That's going to look weird in a pub. That's not going to be as easy to transport as a bit of meat. Plus also, they've nicked these barrels of Guinness. How long until they settle? It's about half an hour for a pint to settle. So we're not actually going to see these on the black market for an extra 30 years. All right.

[00:17:22] This news story is going to hurt. Nearly half of podcasts are dead with no new episodes for a year or more, researchers found. I mean, I definitely do new research. Sorry, new episodes. But are these dead podcasts getting more listeners than me? Analysis found nine to just shy of 20,000 podcast feeds. There was 39.1% of them that were findable by a topic search had not published in the last 12 months. Well, you've come to the right place if you like frequency. Quality is a different thing.

[00:17:51] You've got to pick, haven't you? You either get quality or you get frequency. We all know which side of the argument I've come down on. The research by UK Directory Podcast Amplify read thousands of podcast RSS feeds and recorded the publication date. Great. No, I imagine that. They just did a basic little search. That wouldn't have been difficult to put together. And they've managed to get in the newspapers. All right. We should have done that. We should have done that. Okay.

[00:18:19] This one's not great in the audio form and we don't have a video of today's podcast, but they've come up with the uniforms for the United States Space Force. You know how they've, you've got your army, there's your land. You've got your navy, that's the water. You've got your marines. I would have thought that's also the water. I don't really know what that means. Is it just in marinas?

[00:18:41] Is it because the navy's out in the ocean and if you've got a harbour, a jetty, anything with a pontoon, if you've got a rear, then you're going to be calling in the marines. Is that how that works? Then you've got your air force up in the air. That's a lot easier. Basically, it's just the marines that are tricky. And now you've got space for where you stop getting air. They've made the uniforms for them. And you've got to be honest, they are exactly like the bad guys in Star Wars. You remember that Mitchell and Webb sketch, Are We the Bad Guys, right?

[00:19:11] We're the ones with the black uniforms with the eagles on. Is America the bad guys? Oh, you've already got an answer on that one. Okay, fair enough. There's a Tom Jones story. So if you think about it for more than a second, we all know the punchline that I'm going to head towards. Let's do it. So Tom Jones has reportedly been dropped as a full-time coach on The Voice UK. New series, won't be having him as a coach. But he is getting on a bit and it is true to say that on a lot of these talent shows,

[00:19:41] they do churn around the judges. I think what I'm saying is, it's not unusual. Here's a Richard Hammond story and it just relates to a lot of what I went on about in my last Edinburgh show about dementia. But Richard Hammond worries every time he loses his keys that he might have dementia because of the brain injury he suffered on Top Gear or because of the people you work with. It'll all take its toll.

[00:20:03] But I know exactly how he feels because both of my parents had dementia, had Alzheimer's, and everyone older than them had Alzheimer's. And if you're in that situation, and I've talked about this in the show, right? If you forget something, you immediately think to yourself, oh, it's happening. Here we go. But people who don't have reasons to be paranoid about it, when they forget things, they don't even notice.

[00:20:29] So the weird thing is, out of the two groups, people who are paranoid about having dementia and people who aren't paranoid about having dementia, the people who aren't forget more because they forget every time they've forgotten something. Meanwhile, my head can list all the times I've forgotten something. It's like a steel trap up there. So there you go, Richard, if you're listening, and I'm sure you're a big fan of the show, that's some good news for you. Entertainment news and yet also not entertainment news.

[00:20:52] Strictly Judge Craig Revel Horwood, I bet she would, says that being a bit rude to cold callers asking for casual info is exactly the right thing to do. He is backing the Take Five to Stop Fraud campaign after it found that more than half of Brits stayed on unexpected calls for longer than they wanted to. Yeah, well, they know how to do it. Thankfully, I'm now middle-aged, and I've reached that kind of like beep-it mentality

[00:21:19] where you get a call and you go, oh, I'm just calling about installing a smart meter. I don't have time for this. Sorry, I'm hanging up now. Because if you don't actually go, I'm hanging up now whilst doing it. Oh, can we just ask a... Got you. The politeness is our kryptonite. My dad, though, to be fair, we're having a dementia-themed show. Towards the end with my dad before he moved into the home when he was a little bit confused, I was really worried about him because he got scammed. But I was with him one time when the phone goes off, and it's this guy who said, they don't really do these anymore,

[00:21:49] but landline scams where they'd say, we've detected that your computer has a virus. Could you log in? And my dad's giving it the, oh, go on then, pal. Yep. No, go on then, pal. And he looks at me, and I thought, he's getting scammed. What's happening? He looks at me, smiled, and I thought, oh, no, he knows. Yep, no, I'm sat in front of the computer right now. Yep. Yeah, carry on. And he just sits there for ages. He's nowhere near his computer. We bought him a computer. He got a virus on it. I put Linux on it. He couldn't work out how to turn the thing on. So I knew he wasn't going to get scammed, right?

[00:22:19] Yep. All right. No, I ain't got a computer, pal. And this was after like 10 minutes, and the guy was furious. And you just think, if you, if your position in life is a scammer, and someone has just pulled a smaller version of a trick on you, have the good grace to be like, all right, yeah, fair play. Don't, oh, yeah, start shouting at my dad. Like, hang on. You just got outwitted by an 80-year-old with dementia. Who's the pillock now? Listen, that's your news update done for the day. Got to head off.

[00:22:48] It's my lad's first day at proper school in reception. Put that newspaper over there. So I managed to squeeze this in. Hopefully that's all right for you. Also, after I dropped him off, I went and got some newspapers to come and do the show. And as I walked back, I'd bought myself a vanilla crown. And I crammed it in my face whilst walking past the gym. And you know what? It had one of those epiphany moments. So maybe, before I go and pick my light up, I need to go for another walk. There is a chance the universe is sending me a message.

[00:23:16] Subscribe to wherever you found this podcast for your almost daily news updates. Have a look at the old youtube.com forward slash at Mr. Stephen Allen for some videos of the podcast that I do. And also a video about the triple lock, which has upset some. And substack.com forward slash at Mr. Stephen Allen. We've still got the yoga article on there. In case you wanted to join a yoga club, there might be some bad news for you. Anyway, all of that's an option. Click like, whatever you can do in these days.

[00:23:45] Track me down on social media at Mr. Stephen Allen. 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.