The News Quiz: Ep 4. Gear shifting and Shoplifting

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Speaker 19 Welcome to the Newsquiz.

Speaker 20 I am Andy Zolkman.

Speaker 23 In case you're wondering, after last week's show from Dundee, we did eventually make it back south after Storm Aoen gave us a slightly longer-than-planned stay in Scotland and brought Wild Mayhem across the country.

Speaker 27 Now I'm not saying it definitely was divine retribution for us sending Liz Truss and Nigel Farage the other way across the ocean for Trump's inauguration, but I am saying we definitely cannot rule that out as an explanation.

Speaker 20 Our teams this week, we have Team Grasp the Nettle versus Team Swiftly Remember Why Gloves Were Invented.

Speaker 20 On Team Nettle, we have Hugo Rifkin and Simon Evans.

Speaker 32 And on Team Gloves, Susie McCabe and Athena Toblenu.

Speaker 33 And our first question, I'll give this to Hugo first.

Speaker 34 What is the defining mission of the Starma government, according to A, the Prime Minister in an article in The Times this week, and B, according to you?

Speaker 30 Well, it's a secret.

Speaker 35 They can't tell us.

Speaker 12 They got the mission a few months ago on one of those old-fashioned reels of tape and listened to it and were asked if they wanted to accept it and then it burst into flames.

Speaker 12 And we just have to hope they remember what it is because there's no way of finding out now, certainly not from the plot, but there's going to be a lot of running and a lot of stunts.

Speaker 12 Rachel Reeves pulling her face off

Speaker 18 and being

Speaker 12 Margaret Thatcher underneath.

Speaker 12 But apart from that, it's growth.

Speaker 16 According to them, it's growth.

Speaker 21 According to me,

Speaker 12 according to me, I think it's to find Ed Milliband.

Speaker 35 Right. Because where is he?

Speaker 12 He's been gone for ages. It's like.

Speaker 15 He's going round and round on a huge wind turbine.

Speaker 9 Strapped on.

Speaker 12 It's like they've left him somewhere, like under a book or something.

Speaker 12 I don't know, it's really odd. It's like, where's Wally? But it's, well, where's Wallace, I suppose.

Speaker 30 Where's Wallace was the original working title for the film Braveheart.

Speaker 17 So I mean, what, according to you, what is the defining mission of the Starmer Government?

Speaker 15 Well, I quite like the idea of it being, you know, the five-year mission of my youth was James T. Kirk's five-year mission, the starship or the Starma Enterprise, to

Speaker 15 seek out new worlds and new civilizations and see if we could persuade them to come and live in Birmingham.

Speaker 36 All right, you guys, what would you say is the defining mission of the Starmer Government?

Speaker 37 To try and be as far away from the Labour Party principles as they possibly can.

Speaker 10 It's one of two things I can't work out. It's either to build a Death Star

Speaker 10 or to get free tickets to Glastonbury every year.

Speaker 33 This was an article in the Times, Hugo.

Speaker 36 You write for The Times.

Speaker 38 Yeah, I didn't write that one. Right.

Speaker 39 Is this

Speaker 23 paving the way for a job swap?

Speaker 33 I mean, how would you say that?

Speaker 12 This is Kirsten's article, where he was writing about he wants to sweep away regulation. He's very big on that, although it was really confusing because he likened regulation to Japanese knotweed.

Speaker 19 Yes.

Speaker 12 But he said he's pro-growth, but he wants to cut the thing that's like Japanese knotweed, which is the thing that grows the most.

Speaker 12 But he also said we have shifted gears with a raft of pro-growth deregulation policies. And the one place you don't get gears is on a raft.

Speaker 12 That's a pedalo.

Speaker 12 So it was like it was a thicket of mixed metaphors coming at us like a runaway train out of a cannon.

Speaker 15 It's pretty ambitious, though, isn't it, to want to create growth. I understand.
I believe that growth might be their agenda, but it's not just about regulations.

Speaker 15 You can't achieve net zero and make power four times more expensive than is the average in the other OECD countries and then expect growth to happen.

Speaker 12 I mean, technically, if the power companies are earning four times as much, that's growth.

Speaker 6 I suppose so. Yeah, win-win.

Speaker 15 Growth in jumpers.

Speaker 12 In the paper, so Tom Peck, our sketch writer, pointed out that where Rachel Reeves made her speech about growth was in a factory where they'd shut down all the machines so she could make a speech about growth.

Speaker 12 And if you want growth, what you don't want to do is shut down all the massive machines behind you and then stand in front of them saying we're going to have the machines doing more.

Speaker 37 What about when Rachel started talking about her seventy mile growth corridor? I thought, well you

Speaker 37 should get an ointment for that love.

Speaker 6 That sounds like Japanese not wheat.

Speaker 15 I did feel a little bit sorry sorry for Kemi Badenot, though, having to try and critique this, you know, during Prime Minister's questions and so on, because her line of attack was essentially, you're just doing all the things that we said we were going to do.

Speaker 15 You did have 14 years to try and crack on with it. I think the Tories are realising they made a mistake electing Kemmi Badenot.
I think they're realising they made a mistake electing someone.

Speaker 15 who's a Tory, basically, because they carry a burden with them of the previous failures.

Speaker 15 Should have probably just like picked someone at random or maybe had a game show, like, kind of, you know, there's something when they try and get the lead in sound of music or something.

Speaker 13 One of those, you know.

Speaker 23 I thought you were just going to stop there when you said they made a mistake in picking someone

Speaker 28 rather than just an aching void of nothingness, which I think is what the public is thirsting for in politics.

Speaker 15 They could have done it like if I got news for you with a rotating host for the next five years.

Speaker 12 I mean, they did that for the last five years.

Speaker 37 I I also quite like the idea if we're going to have all these gardening and agriculture messages and metaphors and politics, out with Rachel Reeves and with Charlie Demock. That's what I say.

Speaker 37 That's what I say. I want a browless red-headed siren looking after the economy.

Speaker 16 Andy, it's your time.

Speaker 33 All right, let's have another question.

Speaker 34 This can go to Susie and Athena.

Speaker 24 In an effort to boost growth, Chancellor Rachel Reeves announced that a third what

Speaker 35 will come to pass.

Speaker 10 Oh, I'm very excited about this. We're going to get Greece 3.

Speaker 37 It's the runway, isn't it? Heathrow. You had to get a taxi from Dundee, Edinburgh, but yet Heathrow gets a third runway.
I'm just saying, is it any wonder Scotland is grumpy?

Speaker 12 It's the decline of the Labour Party, isn't it? It's from Tony Blair in the third way to Kirstarborough in the third runway.

Speaker 34 There was another transport project announced, which is a train line from Oxford to Cambridge.

Speaker 40 Thank the Lord.

Speaker 37 Let me tell you, there's six million people up the road who have been in tender hooks about the Oxford to Cambridge rail line. It's all right, Glasgow, don't worry about the poverty.

Speaker 30 I mean, look, I mean, if the HS2 doesn't unlock the Northern Powerhouse and the Scottish economy by making it very slightly quicker to get from London to Birmingham, surely an Oxbridge train line will.

Speaker 23 And we can add an annual university train race to the sporting calendar.

Speaker 25 Does this excite you, Simon?

Speaker 15 No, I think it's an excellent idea, yes. I mean, I can see why it's open for mockery, but these are elite organisations.

Speaker 15 They're one of the few things in which the British people really do lead the world. Oxford and Cambridge are offering the top five of the universities in the world.

Speaker 15 They're the only non-American universities in the top ten, along with Imperial. I think they should create a triangle.

Speaker 15 I think, in fact, our country should be formed of a series of interlocking triangles triangles between centres of excellence.

Speaker 15 I would like to see Norwich and Ipswich, I've said it before, be restored to their medieval status as centres of excellence for the wool trade.

Speaker 12 I guess when the Oxbridge train is broken, you get on a rail replacement service to Durham or Bristol.

Speaker 33 So, Ostam has been criticised for the environmental impact of some of these growth policies, particularly the third runway.

Speaker 16 Will he be able to hit net zero?

Speaker 17 I'm talking about environmental goals rather than his approval rating.

Speaker 15 The third runway is going to have an impact on net zero, obviously, and we are after.

Speaker 15 I mean, unless they make it only available to battery-powered flights or something, I don't know, or just gliders or something.

Speaker 15 It is thumbing its nose at anyone who has, yes, is encountering the expenses of running a vehicle of any kind. But I think it could possibly be offset by expanding the network of cycle lanes.

Speaker 15 And in particular, I would like to see a series of cycle lanes through London that are only available to Jeremy Vine.

Speaker 33 So, well, the government's made various suggestions for how to spark growth via infrastructure projects.

Speaker 29 Let's see if our panelists have got any better ones.

Speaker 36 So, what can get this country moving, Athena?

Speaker 10 I'll host the Olympics all the time.

Speaker 35 Right.

Speaker 10 Yeah, every four years, just have it here, because that was great and I really enjoyed that. And it'll be in a different city every four years in this country.
Done.

Speaker 12 I'd like to see more bat tunnels. Right.
You heard about the bat tunnel. Yeah, yeah.
It's a bat tunnel that was in Buckinghamshire that they built to save the bats and it cost £100 million,

Speaker 12 which they worked out was £300,000 per bat.

Speaker 12 And obviously, the obvious problem, because basically this tunnel, it was a tunnel that went over a railway line so the bats didn't get hit by trains.

Speaker 12 You know, these things are meant to be able to navigate in the dark, because you think they could spot a train, particularly the speeds they move in this country.

Speaker 12 But the fundamental flaw with it was basically this is a tunnel for the trains, not for the bats. But the thing bats really, really like famously is tunnels.

Speaker 12 So if you build a tunnel, the bats are going to go in the tunnel, they're not going to be out the tunnels. But I think the problem was there weren't enough bat tunnels.

Speaker 12 So, if you actually leave the train running free but cover the rest of Britain in bat tunnels,

Speaker 16 problem solved, right?

Speaker 12 Yeah, and a big project.

Speaker 38 Yeah,

Speaker 37 what about if we maybe rejoin the customs union or the EU? That might boost growth again.

Speaker 37 Leave the bats alone, man.

Speaker 10 It's funny, that's the one thing they don't say. They're like, oh, there's no trade, there's no growth, no one's coming here, no one intelligence coming here, no one wants to work here.

Speaker 10 Can't think why.

Speaker 12 And then they say, maybe Nigel Farage can solve this problem.

Speaker 16 It's like, oh.

Speaker 15 It is interesting and perhaps counterintuitive and not what we expected that since Britain withdrew from the European Union, we have swung massively to the left and the European Union is now starting to embrace the politics of the 1930s.

Speaker 15 I don't know. These things are quite curious.
You're not seeing an enormous amount of growth in Europe at the moment. Whether that's because we're not there, I don't know.

Speaker 28 I'm a big fan of Europe.

Speaker 42 I grew up there.

Speaker 28 Grew up in a lovely little European town called Tunbridge Wells,

Speaker 33 900 miles north of Barcelona. Or if you're in Tallinn, just head west and keep going.

Speaker 16 But I would love your

Speaker 4 continent, Europe.

Speaker 26 Any continent that can produce both Michelangelo and Michael Atherton.

Speaker 22 Right, yes.

Speaker 24 So, well, this is the message from the Prime Minister and the Chancellor this week.

Speaker 23 Here, Starmer pledged to the nation that he would be...

Speaker 24 Hang on, we need to make this sound a bit more convincing than Starma generally manages.

Speaker 22 The killer of weeds, the kicker-down of barriers, the axe-wielding, chainsawing, slayer of red tapes, the grasper of nettles, the unleasher of progress, for I am Stamzi, the indestructible one.

Speaker 6 Fear my power.

Speaker 23 He promised to speed up decision-making.

Speaker 41 Maybe try improving it as well as speeding it up.

Speaker 28 That might be arguably even more important.

Speaker 23 I mean, if the speeded up decision is to make another HS2-style call to boost the economy and quality of life of people in the north of England and reduce urban deprivation in Scotland by let's say building a high-speed ice canal link from Islington to Bognar Regis, that might not be what the country needs.

Speaker 43 But

Speaker 17 for now Heathrow's third runway remains up in the air, which is the budget cheaper option for it, of course.

Speaker 23 Obviously trying to boost growth and national prosperity with infrastructure projects is a bit square these days.

Speaker 27 Far easier to do it as we learn from our American superiors by persecuting minorities and renaming geographical features.

Speaker 30 Then maybe we just need to tweak the Irish Sea to the UK Northern Irish Sea, Spain to North Gibraltar,

Speaker 23 Denmark to West Northumberland, and the North Sea to the newly branded Madbets 247C casino.

Speaker 29 The problem is, looking back at the UK over the last few decades of deregulated wealth creation and the North Sea oil boom, is that rather than mending the roof while the sun shone, we sold the roof while the sun shone.

Speaker 17 Conservative Shadow Chancellor Mel Stride said the government, quote, does not understand business or where wealth comes from.

Speaker 17 Of course, the previous Tory government also appeared not to know where wealth came from, but at least it did have a very good steer on where the wealth was going to.

Speaker 6 Right, at the end of that round, the scores are three points all.

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Speaker 17 Our next question. According to research, British people do it more than twice as much as the French.

Speaker 41 We also do it more than twice as much as the Americans.

Speaker 31 What

Speaker 15 is it slagging off Americans and the French?

Speaker 37 It's online shopping, isn't it?

Speaker 37 I love this story because Britain loves online shopping more than anyone else in the world, but simultaneously moan at the dilapidation on our city's high streets.

Speaker 37 So it's like, we love the high street. I like the idea of it being pretty, but I don't want to leave the house.
So I'm just going to go online and do it.

Speaker 37 Brilliant, it's the most British thing I've ever heard in my entire life. It's like moaning, queuing, and the rain.

Speaker 37 It's just tremendous.

Speaker 37 I think the fact that we are doing online shopping because we don't want to go out because all our high streets are ruined with charity shops, sunbed shops, and no actual shops, and we just moan about it all.

Speaker 13 What a country!

Speaker 10 It's not destroying the high street as much as we think it is because I don't know if you've been to a post office recently, but nothing is thriving more in this online economy than the queue for the bloody post office.

Speaker 10 Oh my god, it comes out the door.

Speaker 12 Amazon wants to start delivering things by drones. Did you see that? Yes.
They've got in Darlington what they call a pilot scheme, which is so obviously the wrong name.

Speaker 12 They're doing it in Darlington. They're massive things, the drones.

Speaker 12 And I was speaking to somebody about this this week, so it's interesting to see how it works, how you're going to stop people like, you know, stealing the drones, stealing the stuff from the drones.

Speaker 12 And I was told the thing is the drones, they're not going to land with the stuff. They're just going to drop the stuff from like 15 to 20 feet up.

Speaker 12 And they had an earlier pilot scheme in America where they did this, and they tested it out by dropping something in people's driveways.

Speaker 12 And the thing they decided that was the perfect thing to drop in people's driveways was cans of soup.

Speaker 9 Can you imagine anything more terrifying than being bombed with soup by an Amazon drone?

Speaker 43 If you deliver the can of soup from the drone at the right angle,

Speaker 21 you can bounce it along a reservoir to somebody who lives on top of the dam.

Speaker 9 Through the letterbox, yeah.

Speaker 12 Well, the problem is, as well, like you won't be able to go to the post office anymore when you want to return it.

Speaker 22 You're just going to have to stand in the garden and throw it up.

Speaker 9 It's really dangerous.

Speaker 7 But who's ordering soup online?

Speaker 10 I mean, who's Uber-eating all of our tomato soup, please?

Speaker 10 That's too far.

Speaker 13 That's too far.

Speaker 29 My mother, for my birthday last year, sent me from Amazon a can of Haggis.

Speaker 12 Did it take out the dog on the way down?

Speaker 15 I would like to know how much of the online shopping is done whilst drunk, because I think that's the key factor, isn't it? That gives us the edge over the face. It's the late night, yeah.

Speaker 15 I enjoy that, late at night. You have a cup, you know, a decent glass of shopping scotch,

Speaker 39 and

Speaker 15 you're sitting there in your pants, and nobody knows anything. If you shop in the high street, you're judged.
You can feel people looking at you, can't you?

Speaker 15 As you're rifling through the opportunities, but in the future,

Speaker 43 what are you doing?

Speaker 15 Surely I have demonstrated that I'm not willing to divulge that.

Speaker 15 No, I feel guilty about this because, yeah, the high street is in a terrible state. And I was partly to blame as well.

Speaker 15 In the 80s, I got my first Saturday job as in Dixon's selling computers from the high street.

Speaker 15 It's like suicide, right? We didn't think about it at the time. But we are going to have to think about alternatives for the high street because it's becoming very dismal, isn't it?

Speaker 15 And I think basically kennelling for students is probably the most obvious thing.

Speaker 15 Just Just sort of move students in there in the evenings, basically.

Speaker 12 But we're we're not spending more time shopping, we're just spending more money.

Speaker 12 Something like Britain spends like two hours a week internet shopping, and the Chinese spend eight hours a week internet shopping, but spend far less money.

Speaker 12 And I don't know if that's because everything's just cheaper in China, or if they're just really bad at it.

Speaker 15 They've got three thousand characters on their keyboards, so that's fine.

Speaker 12 What's the one that looks like a can of soup?

Speaker 10 But so much of what we buy comes from China, like Xi'an and countries like that.

Speaker 10 So we're spending two hours, obviously, like buying from these companies, and they're just spending eight hours laughing at us.

Speaker 27 Yeah, so despite being world leaders in online shopping, we spend little time doing it. So are we more impulsive or just more efficient?

Speaker 43 Do we just buy the first thing we see before working out exactly what to do with our shiny new Freddy Krueger-themed fridge freezer or that consignment of Balinese fighting fighting fish that we always wanted?

Speaker 37 I think we're just all in a state of depression that we're just looking for a dopamine hit. That's what it is.

Speaker 37 I don't think anyone's sitting going, I really need a little spoon that will crack open the top of my boiled egg.

Speaker 37 Listen, I am seeing this as someone who bought a Hoover that was specifically for Lego.

Speaker 37 I am that soldier, right?

Speaker 15 I think part of the the reason the French don't do it is because they like to regard shopping as a stylish exercise, don't they?

Speaker 15 They have their patisserie and their belangerie and they have that incredible shop where you can buy both tobacco and stamps.

Speaker 15 It's historical, right? Marie Antoinette famously said, let them eat cake, and the world laughed, but now they have patisseries and we have Gregg's and I think they're sanitized.

Speaker 19 So her sacrifice was worthwhile, isn't it?

Speaker 17 And many people have claimed that a lot of Britain's economic and financial difficulties come from people spending money on things that we don't actually need.

Speaker 17 Personally, I think this is subjective and ridiculous, and I would say that I definitely need my random jingle generator 3000X, a brilliant device that turns anything you say into a jingle.

Speaker 38 It turns anything you say into a jingle.

Speaker 39 Worth every penny.

Speaker 34 Our next question, this can go to Susie and Athena.

Speaker 33 A little maths question for you here.

Speaker 17 Based on current food prices, in order to meet the government-recommended healthy diet, a household with children, in the least well-off 20% of the population, would need to spend 70% of its disposable income on food.

Speaker 34 If a top-level Premier League footballer spent the same proportion of his disposable income on healthy food and had been put by his manager on an apple-only diet,

Speaker 17 how many apples would he buy every week?

Speaker 10 Oh, in this country, after Brexit, 20 apples.

Speaker 33 I'm afraid you've gone a little low on that.

Speaker 37 I think it would be a hundred apples, but that would hurt his teeth too much, so I think he would just go for apple hubba bubba.

Speaker 15 Two and a half million apples.

Speaker 43 You're closer?

Speaker 24 It's eight hundred and twenty nine thousand one hundred and four apples.

Speaker 25 Admittedly I just made that number up, but the battery

Speaker 33 got it written down, so I'll give uh I'll give one point to uh to Simon for that.

Speaker 17 I mean this is uh in terms of the kind of cost of living crisis which we're still struggling with.

Speaker 36 It's, yeah, healthy meals become twice as expensive per calorie as junk food.

Speaker 30 What have we learned about the state of the nation from what we eat, do you think?

Speaker 37 I think it's interesting when people try and talk to us about this because when I was growing up, there was only two types of fruit that you could get, ornamental or tinned, right?

Speaker 37 Either way.

Speaker 37 Either way, your teeth were damaged for the rest of your life.

Speaker 10 One of the most criminal things that's happened in this country, definitely over, let's say, 15-20 years, is that they've made really basic things middle-class.

Speaker 10 I used to have an old job, and I once took a mango out of my bag, and someone went, Ooh, la di-da.

Speaker 10 And I was like, it's a mango, it's a bit of fruit, it's a vitamin C. Like, fruit and veg is like a basic thing, it grows from the ground, you pick it up and you eat it.

Speaker 10 For it to be kind of out of people's financial reach, it's sort of criminal.

Speaker 15 You think the working class needs to reclaim mangoes?

Speaker 10 All of them, mangoes, bananas, pears. They're not expensive things, but they are now being thought of as expensive and it's bizarre.

Speaker 10 So I think the next working class movement, you know, you can support striking workers, or you can, I talk about the NHS and carers. Actually, what you've got to do is eat a plum.

Speaker 10 Eat a plum for Britain.

Speaker 36 Increasingly, there's concern about the unhealthiness of red meat products. It's now becoming as socially marginalised as smoking.

Speaker 33 Some businesses even have special shelters outside their offices where people can sneak out for a cheeky hot dog.

Speaker 17 Gotta wait till someone invents an e-susage and it all becomes fine again.

Speaker 17 Till they start selling unregulated raspberry milkshake flavoured salamis to school children.

Speaker 19 And then of course taxation goes up on meat products and it'll become cheaper for people to roll their own. Which

Speaker 8 you see someone at a bus stop rolling a sheath of pig's gut with some mashed up entrails, gonads and connective tissue before tucking it behind their ear as one for later.

Speaker 18 I think that's not the country we want to embrace.

Speaker 37 Spoken like a man who's received ten tagus.

Speaker 27 Our final question in our shopping section: Increasingly brazen with no fear of the consequences because of the knowledge that they won't be jailed.

Speaker 27 A description which has brought together the unlikely combination this week of American presidents and in Britain, which purveyors of an ancient craft.

Speaker 45 Is this a shoplifter?

Speaker 19 Yes, shoplifting.

Speaker 15 Yeah, great British. Is it an ancient craft? Yes, it is.

Speaker 15 Is it? Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 6 It's a craft. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 30 Well, you see, Stonehenge was originally set up as a shop.

Speaker 39 Right, you see.

Speaker 9 And they nicked the walls.

Speaker 6 They nicked everything

Speaker 39 apart from the stone.

Speaker 10 Yeah, it's our second profession.

Speaker 39 Yeah.

Speaker 12 Yeah, so there's an epidemic.

Speaker 43 Yes.

Speaker 12 People are doing it brazenly. Retail crime is supposed to be out of control.
Shoplifters are just helping themselves to stuff. Nobody stops them.
They have no fears of any consequences.

Speaker 37 Right, I'm going to play devil's advocate. Is it shoplifting or is it Ouija's for having to use the self-checkout?

Speaker 15 I think the obvious thing to do is arm the grannies, isn't it? That would be because it's difficult for the shops. They don't want to take legal responsibility for getting involved in

Speaker 15 an escalated violence. But if you gave all pensioners tasers that they could use,

Speaker 15 they would be inclined to do so. And obviously,

Speaker 15 the public sentiment would be on their side. I think that might be a way to stop it.

Speaker 10 yeah for everyone you catch you can get a bit of your winter fuel allowance back yeah

Speaker 37 earn it you can have it but you've got to earn it Ethel earn it no you can't give a pension or a taser I've seen them trying to use a smartphone and

Speaker 15 you get the pensioner friendly tasers with just the three big buttons and none of the other systems

Speaker 37 spoken like a man that's nearly a pensionable age

Speaker 17 yes you know the economy is struggling when even Adam Smith's invisible hand has been stealing from the pick and mix.

Speaker 19 Measures such as posters saying stop, don't shoplift have for whatever reason not worked.

Speaker 17 Nor has allowing shoplifting if the stolen objects are put into a museum, which always used to work for us.

Speaker 28 Nor even has the problem been solved by having a security guard in a pantomime lion outfit wandering up and down the meatile, growling.

Speaker 17 The government response is to announce a new scheme encouraging shoplifters to show their appreciation for the shops that make their work possible by tipping the shop to the value of the goods stolen.

Speaker 9 Sadly has also not worked.

Speaker 17 And the fundamental problem is that a free trip to Australia just isn't the deterrent that it once was.

Speaker 41 Right, at the end of our shopping round, Simon and Hugo have five, Susie and Athena have six.

Speaker 29 Right, moving on now.

Speaker 17 Let's go to Susie and Athena.

Speaker 27 What will reach 72 and a half by 2032?

Speaker 10 Oh, Heathrow, we're going to get 72 and a half runways.

Speaker 10 Definitely.

Speaker 37 No one in Scotland

Speaker 6 is the. Jeremy Clarkson.

Speaker 12 Right, he will be 72 and a half. Born in 1960.

Speaker 6 Right. Yeah.

Speaker 12 Like Nigeria.

Speaker 39 Right.

Speaker 23 Peas in the pod in so many ways.

Speaker 12 And chocolate buttons in the Etrasketch. Right.

Speaker 6 As well.

Speaker 12 Yeah, 1960.

Speaker 15 Is it going to be the age at which you can retire?

Speaker 10 Is it it the length of mortgages in 2025?

Speaker 12 Nigela Lawson.

Speaker 6 Yep. 72.
Yep. That year.
Yeah.

Speaker 21 Prince Andrew, John McEnroe, as well.

Speaker 12 Antonio Banderas.

Speaker 12 And Cameroon.

Speaker 31 It was a big year for African independence finances on the show.

Speaker 15 Didn't Cameroon and Nigeria have a joint birthday party?

Speaker 21 They could do.

Speaker 12 With Ghana and Togo and Somalia.

Speaker 28 Isn't the internet fun?

Speaker 15 It's the ONS's anticipated population of Great Britain, 72.5 million people, which represents, I think, another 5 million in the next eight years or something like that.

Speaker 10 That's more people than they have in France. So the first time we're going to have more people here than in France.

Speaker 7 So people, let's have them.

Speaker 12 The Daily Mail reported the five million population rise that is looming. Said it was shocking.
It says, shocking, like 10 Manchesters.

Speaker 12 And I was like, it's not that bad, 10 Manchesters, a bit harsh on Manchester. It's not like it's Glasgow.

Speaker 6 Let's have another question now.

Speaker 36 Richard III, the controversial former monarch and prototype social media pylon cancellation victim, was famously dug up in a car park in Leicester.

Speaker 27 But why were kings in general removed from a car park in nearby Nottingham this week?

Speaker 42 Anyone?

Speaker 10 Just the chess. Yes.
The chess table.

Speaker 7 That's what in a car park, correct?

Speaker 12 I felt this story was really unfair because it's lots lots of people complaining that there's a chess board in a car park because that's not what a car park is for.

Speaker 12 But another way of looking at it is it's just a chess park with absolutely excellent parking.

Speaker 33 I mean, what would you say is what are the best games to play in a car park that don't require a council-funded concrete chess table that is unfair?

Speaker 13 Twister. Right.

Speaker 37 As a perimenopausal woman, I quite enjoy playing Where Did I Park My Car?

Speaker 37 Oh, in Edinburgh.

Speaker 41 Well, that means that this week's show is a 10-all draw.

Speaker 43 Thanks to Simon, Nejudo, Susie, and Athena.

Speaker 15 Thank you for listening to the Newsquiz.

Speaker 19 Goodbye.

Speaker 45 Taking part in the Newsquiz were Simon Evans, Athena Kaplanu, Susie McCabe, and Hugo Rifkin.

Speaker 36 In the chair was me, Andy's Altman, and additional material was written by Cameron Loxdale, Sasha Lowe, Merrill O'Rourke, and Peter Tolouche.

Speaker 30 The producer was Rajiv Karia, and it was a BBC Studios audio production for Radio 4.

Speaker 46 Hello, this is Marion Keys. And this is Tara Flynn.
We host a podcast you might like for BBC Radio 4 and BBC Sounds called Now You're Asking.

Speaker 46 Each week we take real listeners' questions about life, love, lingerie, cats, dogs, dentists, pockets, or the lack of, anything really, and apply our worldly wisdom in a way which we hope will help, but also hopefully entertain.

Speaker 46 Join us, why don't you? Search up Now You're Asking on BBC Sounds Tanking You

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