The News Quiz: Ep 7. Tariff Turmoil

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Hello, I'm Andy Zaltzman, and I have just applied to become the new head of Thames Water.

All I have to do to prove that I have what it takes is drink this glass of water from the Thames.

Come on, Andy, be brave.

I figure, figure, is water supposed to be opaque?

I can't bring myself to do it.

I think even Hercules would draw the line at that one, so instead I will have to stick with hosting the news quiz.

Hello, welcome to the News Quiz.

Our teams this week we have a special tie-in with the BBC's new Walking with Dinosaurs series.

New discoveries since the original series mean we now know that dinosaurs are in fact the evolutionary ancestors of modern-day politicians.

So, our teams are named after two of these newly identified beasts that share 99% of the DNA with our politicians.

We have Team Hippocrosaurus against Team Era after Eratops.

On Team Hippocrosaurus, we have Ian Smith and Rielina.

And on Team Era after Eratops, we have Times columnist Cindy Yu and Armando Ianucci.

So our first question can go to Cindy and Armando.

Which of President Donald Trump's actions has been ruled and or deruled illegal by judges this week, apart from all the other things he's already been convicted for?

Yes.

It is everything, isn't it?

Harmony.

Yeah, how much time do you have?

Deportations.

Tariffs.

Tariffs.

Tariffs.

Territories this week, yes.

His favourite word?

He's terrible.

The thing about Trump.

Very neatly summarised there.

He thinks if you just say you've done it, that it's happened.

And life doesn't work like that.

So it turns out he doesn't have the power to order tariffs.

That's with Congress.

In the same way that he doesn't really

understand how Ukraine and Russia works, but he says we've done a deal and they haven't.

But in his head, he has.

And, you know, he thinks he will solve global warming by doing a deal with the sun.

But it could go as high as the Supreme Court.

They've have not decided just yet.

And he calls them the activist judges.

And it's just judges being active because

that's their job, is to interpret the law.

He called these three judges unelected activist judges and one of them was appointed by Donald Trump.

I've got the words here.

He said, Judges must understand the nation is not here for them.

They are here for the nation.

I shall remove from office those judges who don't understand the demands of the hour.

Oh, no, that's Hitler.

Cindy, what did you make of Trump's sort of battle with, yeah, I mean, the judge that he appointed himself, essentially?

I think it's very annoying for him because only this week a journalist asked him about the label taco, which is something that the financiers in America are comforting themselves with.

It stands for Trump Always Chickens Out.

And a journalist asked him about this, you know, Mr.

President, how do you feel about this label?

And he said, that is the nastiest question anybody's ever asked me.

I think he doesn't want to be associated with anything even vaguely Mexican.

Really annoying point.

I mean, these tariffs might still go ahead because now Trump is arguing that he's using the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, which can only be used in a national emergency.

So that's forming part of his argument.

But I think that's the question, is it?

You know, some would argue that it isn't a national emergency if the herd and McDonald island penguins aren't paying a 25 percent tariff

but i would disagree i think the u.s is in a state of emergency and that emergency is trump yes

i mean he was he was overheard to say actually he was just like who are these checks and balances and how soon can we send them back there

It's a very good way to win an argument.

What Trump is doing is he's bypassing the law by calling it a national emergency.

And I think we've got to utilize that more if that's possible.

Any argument I ever have with my partner, just going to scream that it's a national emergency and the normal rules don't apply.

And that's why I need as many custard creams as I've bought.

I think it's a national emergency when you go to a train toilet and the soap dispenser works but the tap doesn't

yes this is the latest from the President's Titanic efforts to enrich the working class people of America by causing a global trade war that pushes their employers or their own businesses to the precipice of collapse.

Trump had proclaimed to America that tariffs are going to make us rich as hell.

The problem being that hell is not actually that rich.

The fuel bill is astronomical.

Let's move on slightly further north in North America.

This can go to Ian and Rhea.

Who or what did King Charles admire this week in North America for being strong and free?

I think it was Prince Harry.

Didn't say that out loud, I don't think.

I think it was Canada.

Correct, yes.

With no little irony that he had to be called over to protect him.

My dad's more kingly than your dad.

Because the whole world has been moving away from the empire, hasn't it, until Trump looked a little bit annexy, and then everyone's like, oh my god, the king.

And you're right,

it's a ploy by Carney to say that even our kind of young modern country having its parliament opened by a 70-year-old monarch from a thousand-year-old institution associated with colonialism is better than having Donald Trump opened.

There's lots of very subtle diplomacy going on.

And I was interested, they were talking about the Queen's subtle diplomacy with the US and Canada, how she would do it via her brooches.

So apparently, when Trump visited, she wore a brooch that was gifted to her by the Obamas,

and then the next day, she wore a brooch that was gifted to her her by Justin Trudeau when Trump and Trudeau were arguing.

So the Queen would do very subtle things.

Like, if you remember, when she met Liz Trust, she immediately died.

What message was that sending, do you think?

Barely perceptible as a hint.

It's like when G.D.

Vance met the last Paul, but when I'm not hanging around.

It's caught on.

It wasn't a road to mention Trump in his speech, Charles.

It was all coded, but if you listen to it, every now and then he says, I think you get who I'm talking about.

Do you catch my drift?

He kept talking about a kind of an orange tariff monkey.

Well, I guess

from Canada's point of view,

if you've got that choice, do you want to ditch that anachronistic but comfortingly powerless and impressively bling-hatted symbolic head of state when the alternative is essentially the political equivalent of swapping your fading and untrendy but comfortable underpants for a barbed wire G-string?

I mean, yes, it gets people talking, but is it really you?

So, um,

so you can see why Canada's not maybe completely on board with becoming the 51st state.

And I think the Canadian Conservatives were en route to winning this election if it wasn't for Trump making this very unwelcome offer.

So, he's actually totally screwed up the right wing in Canada.

Well, in an effort to win over a sceptical Canadian public, Donald Trump has offered Canada a free golden what?

Shower.

Is it a dome?

Yes, Golden Dome, which basically he said they can have a free subscription to Trump's exciting new space-based missile defense system, the Golden Dome.

All they have to do is become the 51st state of the USA or pay $61 billion.

So it's quite a tempting choice.

I think he said our treasured 51st state.

It was very tender.

Feel sorry.

don't join and if they don't pay up and whatever yeah how does it how does the dome then work because the dome has to shield the entire, unless there's a flap.

Yeah, I think for missiles to hit Canada, if Canada's not part of the scheme, there's a missile flap.

It's like in St.

Paul's.

I know this because I'm Jewish, but

if the Jewish person says a prayer in St.

Paul's, a flap of the dome opens and the prayer just fizzles out into the air rather than being filtered up through the dome into the aerial at the top.

As a Catholic,

I'm not sure that's how prayer

As an atheist, I can tell you it doesn't work out.

Yes, so King Charles has said that he likes his Canadas like his granny liked her gin and tonics, strong and free.

Charles, the reigning British banknote model of the year, gave a speech at the opening of Canada's Parliament, which subtly criticised Donald Trump's threat to co-op the country into the USA as its 51st state.

With the unpopularity of the monarchy falling in Canada amidst American monarch Donald Trump's audacious Emperor Nero impersonation, Charles's visit reaffirmed Canada's preference to remain as Cornwall plus rather than become Michigan minus.

Right, at the end of our North America round, the scores are four to Sydney and Armando, three to Ian and Ria.

Moving on to the the Middle East now.

Here is your question.

Prime Minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu leads a criminal gang.

These are the words this week of someone who once did what I would say quite relevant job.

Former Prime Minister of Israel.

Correct.

Ehud Olmut.

Yes.

Is that the pronunciation?

Prime Minister 2006 to 2009.

Who said basically what's happening is criminal.

Yes.

And murderous.

And there was some pushback from Netanyahu, who says, no, we're just going after Hamas.

Most of them are dead, but their ghosts are still lurking

in schools and hospitals, and we have to go after them.

He said something which a lot of people have been thinking for a while, and I think he's given a very good opportunity for people to say it much louder than they were saying beforehand, because mostly it was done internally beforehand.

Yayeh Golan, former deputy chief of staff of the Israeli Defence Forces, also criticised Netanyahu, saying a sane country does not fight against civilians, does not kill babies as a hobby, does not give itself the aim of expelling population.

So, I mean, he was a four-decade veteran of the Israeli military and former deputy chief of staff of the Israel Defence Forces.

So, I mean, can Netanyahu keep just sort of batting this off like an unwanted tennis ball?

Yes, if we keep selling them guns.

Well, Britain has been accused of mixed messaging for simultaneously criticizing the Netanyahu government, but also doing what?

Saying, do you want some more guns?

Well, that's essentially the correct answer.

But

specifically, sending a trade envoy to Israel to drum up business whilst also criticizing.

So did we specify that those guns were for wars, or were we sending them thinking they were for starting 100-metre race?

Is this Lord Austin?

Yes.

I think that's been misreported.

He's gone on a fact-finding mission.

He's not out to sell because we're trying to come up with ways of not sending people to prison because the prisons are crowded.

So he's asking Netanyahu, how do you get away with murder?

Yeah, it is really confusing because last week, of course, David Lammy, foreign secretary, said, yeah, this isn't good.

We're not going to do any more trade deals with Israel.

And then the Department of Business still sent this trade envoy this week.

And they went, oh, no, no, no, that has nothing to do with what was said last week because this is about the existing trade deal that already exists.

It's just, you know, what's already in place.

Just before we started recording, reports emerged that Benjamin Netanyahu has said that Israel has accepted a ceasefire proposal.

But it can be quite hard to be hopeful.

I mean, I'm, you know, I still have to think that the glass is half full.

Unfortunately, I think it's full of the shattered remnants of what used to be the top half of the glass.

Yes, the criticism for Benjamin Netanyahu, whose actions continues to deepen and spread, with Israel's Prime Minister, not so much pushing the envelope of human rights violations as putting the envelope in a catapult and twanging it into the path of a jet engine.

He has been accused of perpetrating war crimes by his predecessor Ehud Olmert, by former high-ranking officials in the Israeli military, by families of the Israeli hostages still held by Hamas, by national leaders, by 800 UK lawyers and academics, and by almost 400 writers.

Now, Netanyahu, who has thus far proved disappointingly redoubtable in his ability not to be swayed from his path of obliterative destruction, even by a very strongly worded letter from significant figures in the arts world.

But bearing in mind that he's obviously not even swayed by 10 pretty unambiguous commandments direct from his own God,

I'm not sure this letter is going to work.

At the end of that round, the scores are 10 to Sydney and Armando, 7 to Ian Maria.

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As the old saying goes, if the cap fits, wear it.

Unless you're going to the hairdressers, in which case it's unhelpful.

But what cap is the government reportedly contemplating taking off because it's not fit for purpose?

This is the two-child benefit cap that was imposed by George Osborne when he was Chancellor at the start of austerity.

I ought to declare an interest in that.

I work with the Child Poverty Action Group and they've been campaigning for some time that all studies agree that the most effective way of lifting children out of poverty is to remove that cap.

So naturally, Kiostana was against it because

it'd love to do it, but the money just isn't there.

People hate me now.

We will do it, but not yet.

We don't know where we're going to get the money from.

So they're going through a bit of a.

I think it was Bridget Phillipson, the Education Secretary, who's now said, been allowed to say by Downstreet, that nothing is off the table.

That's the official.

So they might get around to it.

The problem at the moment for Labour is for quite a lot of families, not very much is on the table.

And I think the sooner they do it, the better.

I think Boris Johnson's family is probably celebrating, right?

Oh, my God, yes.

I mean, I think there should be an upper cap.

And Farage has now endorsed getting rid of the two-child cap because he wants people to feel more encouraged to have children.

So he's in the child-rearing business as well now.

I saw that Labour said they're going to announce their decision in autumn when it publishes their child poverty strategy, CPS.

It's not a good idea to have the same initials as the Crown Prosecution.

So

makes it sound like your strategy for child poverty is to arrest them and put them in prison.

I think it was just because Keir Staba had some old stationery for him.

I'm very confused.

I don't understand where we're at.

I think we're through the looking glass because here we have the Reform Party going, Well, let's remove the two-child cap.

They want to re-nationalize steel.

They want people to not have to pay tax until they earn a little bit more money, which, by the way, is exactly what the Green Party thinks as well.

If anyone would care to give them any kind of media time, or, hey, Lib Dems, do you want to maybe speak up?

You've got 73 MPs, and all we're talking about is Nigel Farage, who is a party of five MPs, isn't even in the country right now.

He's out in Vegas doing something to do with crypto.

And all we're doing is give him airtime.

He doesn't deserve it.

He doesn't need it.

He's a green.

Every time he opens his mouth, the media goes, oh my god, Nigel is talking.

Nigel is talking.

Which means that Kier Starmer has become a reactionary prime minister, so all of his policies are actually Tory policies because it's the only way that he can disagree with reform, who, by the way, have gone so far to the left, I have no idea what's going on.

but turquoise and green are very similar colours aren't they

I think in Ed Davies defence it's very difficult to hear him over the jet ski motor

he he did his speech to completely undercut what you've just said can we if we just go back to Nigel Farage

he was coming up with labor policies tax breaks and so he was coming up with conservative policies so he was setting reform out as different from the other two parties by stealing policies from both But then, coming up with, when he was asked about the funding, how would this be funding?

He was coming up with extraordinary figures about diversity and inclusion costs something like seven billion.

How does that work?

Because that's what Cindy and I are being paid to be here.

Part of the cost-saving measures Naja Farage talked about was just sending back these young undocumented males who he says are being put up in five-star hotels with free dental.

So, my question is: so, there are single young men living in posh hotel rooms with nice smiles.

Who are they, and where can I find one?

That's a good hotel if they've got a dentist in it.

Farage's policies were estimated to cost up to £80 billion, according to people with IFS.

That's irritable finance syndrome.

Sorry, at the IFS.

Sorry, at the IFS, my mistake.

But where is that money going to come from?

My challenge for our panelists this week is: how are you going to raise 80 billion pounds ideally without anyone noticing that any money is being taken from anyone?

There's a clue when somebody said that Farage is in Las Vegas at the moment.

I think

that's part of his plan.

Again, going back to his speech, not I want to hear it too much, but I mean, he was trying to outline how he was different from the two parties.

And when he was asked specifically about the sums that the commitments, financial commitment, how it's going to be, he just went, oh, here we go again.

All the parties do this, the sums don't add up.

He did actually have some answers, though.

He did say that when he was in charge, there would be no more immigrant hotels and no more people coming over from boats, no more net zero.

So we're going to save money on all of this.

And I just thought, well, that's good.

Yeah, no more net zero.

We're just an island on the edge of a massive continent.

As the water levels rise, we're the first to go.

No, the waves have to come in.

They're just going to be put in tents.

Is there a way of, and this solves like both issues.

So financially, I think if we could find a way to monetize empty goo-ramekins,

or for rising sea levels, if everyone gets their goo-ramekins out,

scoops up a bit of the sea,

and then we'll store them.

So I haven't looked into the science of it, but I think

my headline is we scoop up the sea.

I think you're at the start of your kind of policy journey, aren't you?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

All the parties do this.

Yes, Nigel Farage, also known as the boy who brings all the milkshakes to the yard,

Reform Party leader and Latter-day Fertility Goddess, wants to get Britain breeding again.

He's promised tax breaks to encourage people to have babies.

He said that reform would ditch the two-child benefit cap, a pledge also rumoured about to be put forward by the government.

Axing the policy would cost the Exchequer £3.5 billion,

or in Times Richless terms, 0.1 Hinduja families to put things in perspective.

So while the government could be rowing back on this polity, rowing back good if you're Catherine Granger or Steve Redgrave.

Not so good if you're a government trying to convince an increasingly sceptical public that you have even a vague semblance of a plan.

The government has delayed publication of its child poverty strategy until later in the year, so it's still not clear whether they're going to come down for or against child poverty.

It's very hard to tell sometimes.

Right, so the end of our British politics round.

The scores are now eight to Cindy Normando, six to Ian Unrea.

Very scientific.

Right, our next question, Ian Unrea, you can have this.

Get out and stay in.

A demand set to be issued to whom?

Get out and stay in.

Is this about this new report on early release of prisoners?

Yes, correct.

Get out of jail, but stay in your house.

Oh, yeah, that's one of the options, isn't it, that you can do.

You You can either be released on

license, there's home arrest, there's just don't do it again.

They're saying that, well, one of the problems with the early release of prisoners is that the electronic tanks that would be needed are too expensive.

There would be too many of them.

And I don't, did they do this in the olden days where they would just sort of tattoo on someone's head the crime they did?

If the tanks are too expensive, why don't they just steal them?

Yeah.

Not going to go to prison, so.

How is there no space in prisons?

Haven't we just released a thousand post office workers?

Or you put prisoners in a room and tell them to make Nigel Farage's maths make sense and don't come out until they do.

Just like that idea of prisoners in a room with Nigel Farage going, we're going to make your maths make sense.

You're gonna have correct numbers coming out of your eyes and ears.

I've never heard you sound so sinister.

Oh, you're really gonna add up.

Well, in fact, following the publication of the Gawk Report Intersending, the Home Office has announced that with prisons at popping point, convicts will be given the chance to spend the last two-thirds of their sentences in the prisons of their own minds.

Right, well, at the end end of that round, it's now nine to Ian and Rhea, ten to Cindy and Armando.

Well for our final round this week, appropriately enough given the fact that we can't really trust real news, I have brewed a special hallucinogenic tea made out of all natural, all-British psychotropic herbs.

I've got some

got some snutterwort, parsimony, buckmint, dog weasel and stropweed.

We're just going to add some ethical free-range badger milk and some vegan frogspawn for that trendy bubble tea effect.

And now I'm just going to mash up some newspaper articles

so that my hallucinatory visions will be related to the news.

So, right,

here we go.

Good to go.

All right, just give the hallucinogenic tea a couple of seconds.

It's coming to me now.

I see two warriors, not of our species.

They are clad in metal, fighting where once they danced in joy.

Yeah, it wears off quite quickly.

What news story was I hallucinating there?

A genuine news story from this week's news?

Can I just quickly say, just for the listener, there has just been a lighting change

on a radio show.

We commit, Ian, we commit.

I was thinking back to 30 years ago when I produced this programme, thinking, there's no way I could have got this past Barry Toucan.

This is a story about the Chinese robots having a boxing match.

And

they were remote controlled by humans, but it was the robots themselves who were very impressively actually doing the actions of a boxing match, dodging, and so on.

And this comes fresh off from when, earlier this year at Chinese New Year, I'm sure you all saw the Chinese New Year gala that is very popular and watched by everyone in China, when they were dancing.

So

the rate of progression is pretty fast from dancing to fighting in the space of about four months.

And I'm a bit scared about it.

It's Friday night, so

I'm a bit scared about where we're going next.

Why were they fighting?

Just for fun, I think.

Just for fun, yeah.

They have these very cute, kind of like light blue and light pink helmets.

I don't know why they need gloves, really.

The urine test afterwards must have been interesting.

What are we going to learn?

We've already given them intelligence.

They can beat us at chess, and now we're teaching them to fight.

Have these scientists never seen Terminator?

They weren't very good at fighting, though.

I watched the video and I thought, and I never thought I'd say this, I could take a robot in a kickboxing match.

Right, time for another gulp of my hallucinogenic news tea.

I see the nation overrun by a plague of creatures that don't belong here, reaching their tasty, tasty tentacles.

Oh, maybe this isn't so bad.

What story is that, Ian?

Oh, there's um the exact phrasing was: there's been an octopus explosion.

And the pictures on the article were a lot less gruesome than I thought.

I guess an octopus explosion is a better headline than the reality, which is there's loads of octopuses now.

Yeah, there's just lots of them.

And that's apparently quite good at first because they're quite expensive.

So it's a good catch for

fisher people.

The fish people.

I nearly got that wrong.

The fish people, yes.

It's an early Doctor Who villain, the fishes.

Yeah, and they're also eating the lobster and the scallops, which is a big reveal.

Octopuses are middle class.

Very nice.

Well, I mean, I think we have to be careful because the octopus is a very intelligent animal.

We don't know what they'll do when they find out that we eat them.

I don't think octopuses are smart, though, because why would you live in the sea?

There's nothing, there's nothing going on there.

We've got Nandos.

But actually, one of the things I will not do is eat octopus or let anyone eat octopus when I go to a restaurant because they are incredibly intelligent and they're starting to try and farm them because of the amount of demand that there is for octopus in culinary situations, restaurants, I think they're called.

And so, because they've started trying to farm them and they found out that they'll actually kill themselves in captivity.

Oh,

yeah.

But I guess that makes it easier for them to be farmed.

Well, that brings us to the end of this week's news, Quiz, and our winners are Cindy and Ormando.

Some breaking news just reaching us with the world digesting a new report predicting record temperatures around the world.

Another new report has revealed that ignoring the findings of reports is at an all-time record high.

Thank you for listening to the news quiz.

Goodbye.

Taking part in the news quiz were Rielina, Armandu Inucci, Ian Smith and Cindy Yu.

In the chair was me, Andy Zoltzman.

An additional material was written by Mike Shepherd, Peter Talouch, Sasha L.O.

and Eve Delaney.

The producer was James Robinson and it was a BBC Studios audio production for Radio 4.

Strong message here from BBC Radio 4.

I'm Amanda Yanucci.

And I'm Helen Lewis.

A comedy writer and a journalist, teaming up like a pair of unkempt and unlikely superheroes.

Our mission is to decipher political language.

Stress testing to destruction those used and abused buzzwords and phrases.

Finding out what they really mean.

And looking at whether they're meant to deceive us, or to distract us, or to disturb us.

us and our pledge is to help you spot the tricks of the verbal trade but be one this series does feature strong political language that some listeners may find an inverted pyramid of piffle strong message here from bbc radio 4 listen now on bbc sounds

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