Friday Night Comedy from BBC Radio 4 - The News Quiz - 9th February

Episode Date: March 8, 2024

Coming to you from Belfast this week, Andy Zaltzman quizzes the news with Zoe Lyons, Neil Delamere, Diona Doherty, and Alex Kane.In this episode Andy and the panel will be asking if turning the Northern Ireland Assembly off and on has made it work again?Why Labour is keeping the red flag flying?… a Formula 1 style red flag, that is, which they’re waving at their own environment policy to tell it it’s off.And whose chopper has got them in trouble?Written by Andy ZaltzmanWith additional material by: Cody Dahler, Alison Spittle, John Meagher, and Claire SullivanProducer: Sam Holmes Executive Producer: Richard Morris Production Co-ordinator: Sarah Nicholls Sound Editor: Marc WillcoxA BBC Studios Production for Radio 4

This is the BBC. This podcast is supported by advertising outside the UK. All day long. Taxes extra at participating Wendy's until May 5th. Terms and conditions apply. BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello. We are in Belfast for this week's News Quiz. Oh, sorry, just want to take this. Hello, Prime Minister. I did just say we're in Belfast, yes. You want to bet me £1,000 on there never being any more disagreements

about power sharing in Northern Ireland for the rest of eternity? OK, right. Any other bets? £1,000 says there's no theme tune on my news quiz this week. Yes, I will take that. Use 20s, please, Rishi. Usual place. Hello, welcome to the News Quiz from the freshly reassembled city of Belfast.

We usually record in London, but we've come over to Northern Ireland this week for a little bit of respite from divisive, entrenched, mutually damaging partisan politics. Our teams this week, we have Team Happily Ever After against Team... I suppose that'll have to do for now. On Team Happily Ever After, we have Diona Daugherty and Zoe Lyons. And on Team That'll Do For Now,

Neil Bellamy and columnist and commentator Alex Kane. Oh, sorry, sorry. Hello again, Prime Minister. Oh, you want another grand on Dionor and Zoe to win? OK, sure. Can we please get on with the show? Now, our first question will go to Neil and Alex. Now, I'm sure our audience here in Belfast would agree that Northern Ireland has this week been basking

in the euphoric afterglow of having a functioning government for the first time in two years. Well, that was moderately enthusiastic. But other than the news quiz, who came to Belfast this week to see how it's all panning out? Well, the Prime Minister and the Taoiseach. Correct. They came to tell us how wonderful everything was

and there was still money in the pot and they would do everything they could to get us all together again because, as Richie Sunak said when he came here, this is a moment we can work together. I mean, I'm old enough to remember just about every prime minister since 1971 coming to Northern Ireland at some point and promising that everything would get better, and it never does get better.

Back in the day, I remember saying to somebody once, it would be great every time a leader of a party in Northern Ireland rings the prime minister, you know, says, bail us out, give us money, do this, do that. They just went, sod off, put the phone down. I said, just sort it out yourself. We are the only people who can sort this out for ourselves. Right, so how optimistic are you now?

I think this is good news. The recall of the Assembly took place two years to the day after it was collapsed, so they should have had a little cake. I think they should have news. The recall of the Assembly took place two years to the day after it was collapsed. So they should have had a little cake. I think they should have had a little cake. And as Michelle O'Neill and Emma Little-Pengelly are in a same-sex partnership, I know the perfect bakery... LAUGHTER

..to make that cake. I think it's brilliant. Michelle O'Neill from Tyrone became First Minister. Emma Little-Pengelly from Lagan Valley became Deputy First Minister. For our British listeners, Lagan Valley, how do I explain Lagan Valley? It's like Silicon Valley, but fewer tech companies. It's less apple, more orange. Take your time on that one.

I'm more optimistic than Alex, but broadly speaking, if I had my choice, and this isn't a popular thing to say, I would go for direct rule again, to be honest with you. I think direct rule worked very well for a very long time, and we should try it again, and if that doesn't work, maybe try direct rule from the UK. Well, to be fair here, we've been practising power sharing in the UK for a very long time.

Everybody has a go at it at some point in the UK. Statistically, I'm going to be the Prime Minister by the time I get home tomorrow. Sharing in general never works. So, like, think about when two people, like, pop a Christmas cracker. There's only one crown. Yeah. This is why I hate fondues. It's true.

I understand why power sharing is so hard, because tapas is difficult. I thought they did quite well, though. So Michelle O'Neill became the first minister, and then Emma Lillipenguelli became the second minister, and then they worked their way through, according to the De Haunt principles, all the ministerial stuff,

and the last one was Cameron, a junior minister in the executive. That's Pam Cameron, by the way, as aside from the former UK Prime Minister, Ham Cameron. I mean, not everybody's happy about this, as predicted. So the DUP are in Stormont, and Sinn Féin are in Stormont, and the rest. And the TUV, who is a traditional unionist voice, Jim Allister. Shout it out, stuff.

Now, how do we explain Jim Allister? Jim Allister was described by Paul Gibbon, who's the new Minister for Education, as an angry man in the biggest understatement in the history of the world since Joan of Arc was invited to that unorthodox barbecue.

I mean, as an outsider, I'm fascinated by what's been going on over here in the last two years. I just wonder what the telephone line at Stormont was like for the last, you know... Thank you for calling Stormont. Your call is important to us. We work one day every three years. I mean, I get confused with the number of parties, the number of unionist parties, which is bizarre that there are so many unionist parties, because you think if they're so into union, whether they just become one big party.

The whole Brexit thing was beyond my brain capacity. I thought the Windsor arrangement was just that we all understood that Harry wouldn't come back again. I'll explain to you, say it easy. See the way it works, and obviously I am the elected representative of NI Politics to give you this information, but very rightly so. It's like, have you ever heard that song, you put your left

foot in, your left foot out, in, out, in, out? The Northern Ireland Assembly is basically the Hokey Cokey. Question for Deanna and Zoe. Rishi Sunak, on his visit here, urged the politicians of Northern Ireland to focus on what rather than what?

Protestants are all in Catholics. No? That's in the command paper. Pop this in two weeks' time. As long as it's not in the commando paper. Was it the things that really matter as opposed to constitutional change? That is correct. Do you know what?

This is the first time he visited here, apparently, since we've had a working government. Like, any time he's visited here before, we haven't had a functioning government, and I feel like we were, like, all bells and whistles out to impress him when he arrived. So he went and visited some schoolchildren, but, like, not just some schoolchildren. He

visited some schoolchildren in Hollywood. Right? Kids who order couscous for their lunch we have names like sebastian and lottie you know and how i know we were trying to pull the wool over his eyes like he didn't really see the kids that really represent tears because as his range rover drove away from that school all of his alloys were still on it's so so weird, though, that they would say, like, a middle-aged man to do photo opportunities in a school. Like, those kids, unless you're a YouTuber or a wrestler,

like, those kids probably thought he was either the gardener or there to do vaccinations. It was an integrated school, though, wasn't it? I think that's the forward way that we should be progressing now as a society. I've just applied for my own daughter to go to integrated school. I hope she gets a place. Just because I want her to feel as comfortable around Catholics

as she does around Protestants, I think that's the future. But I feel like I am genuinely single-handedly undoing decades of sectarianism when I'm teaching her that not all billies are silly. Let me tell you about Rishi Sunak and that line about focus on the things that matter and not focus on the Constitution. We discovered earlier this week that his Secretary of State,

Chris Election Hazard, who has been kept in place for a very long time now, admitted that his knowledge of Northern Ireland politics and of unionism was not much more than GCSE standard. I've taught GCSE politics. He's not even close to GCSE standard politics. But the issue is, he's so far removed from what people think. Because the constitutional issue is the dominant issue,

and we know it's the dominant issue. There used to be a game we played in the Assembly, which was how long, in three moves, it will take someone to get to the past. And there was one debate when the executive was meeting in 1999, and it

started off with, they were talking quite sensibly for a while about roads and what they need to do about roads. And then somebody from Sinn Féin said, well, you know, that's a lot of British money, haven't been in two seconds theatre. Well, if you hadn't bombed the bloody roads, we wouldn't... So within five seconds, they were straight back to the past,

and that is the problem in Northern Ireland. It is a cliche to say it, but the past is always in front of us. And that is the NA tourism tagline. Come to Belfast, where the past is always in front of us. And that is the NA tourism tagline. Come to Belfast, where the past is always in front of you. They say the past is a different country, but here they go, but which country? Yeah. Sunak also said that he hoped the new arrangements

would ensure that all the benefits that are there as a result of Brexit can be seized. Any seizing happened already, do you think, Brexit benefits? No. No. No. It's also because in some senses you have to feel sorry for unionism because even though the DUP had that up-close and personal relationship with the Conservative Party, they still believed every single word that was said. They just can't get their

head around the fact that the party which still describes itself as the Conservative and Unionist Party takes every opportunity, without even making any secret of it, of shafting them, severely shafting them and clearly enjoying the fact that they're shafting them. Is a good shafting one of the

benefits of Brexit? I'm listening. I might have voted differently had I read that small print. Question for Zoe and Fiona. The new power-sharing executive has already asked for what? A day off. More money. Correct. More money. Correct. More money.

Yeah. I've been offered what? Is it 3.3 billion? 3.3 billion. That's loads. Wasn't it though? You should be the minister for finance. That's so much money.

Yeah, 3.3 billion. But that's not enough. Not if Emma Little Pangeli wants to follow in her predecessor's footsteps and blaze 500 million on a couple of chicken sheds, no? It's just that. And so it begins. It was so good, like Michelle O'Neill stood up there and she just went, listen, I want to be the First Minister for all.

That's what she said. There was no mention of United Ireland. And then afterwards in the interviews, Mary Lou Macdonald, President of Sinn Féin, were like, well, is there going to be a border poll? When is there going to be a border poll? And she was like, well, what day is today? It's going to take us a couple of weeks

to put up the posters, I suppose. So will we say Wednesday week? Shall we say that? So if Mary Lou Macdonald said that United Ireland is within reach, and then Geoffrey Donaldson almost had a joke, almost, he said, well, you must have the longest arms in Ireland. What he should have said was, you were told to put your arms beyond reach,

is what he should have said. But they've been very nice to each other. There was no kind of antagonism in the chamber. It was kind of nice. I mean, Michelle O'Neill

wants to have the new First Minister's crest as a pope riding a dinosaur. But I even, I think it has been quite civil, hasn't it?

But I do think Michelle O'Neill's had some really important questions for Rishi when he was over. You know, she was just there like,

is Arlene pure rage in this guy? That's her motivation. And, well, Sunak and Leah Varadkar did come here, but they didn't do what while they were here? They didn't hold a joint press conference.

Right. Rishi didn't hold a joint press conference with the Irish Taoiseach. Bit strange. He is a leader of Indian heritage and he's down in the polls, but he is still, you know, the leader of one of the world's most successful economies. Not chatting

with Rishi Sunak. That was a bit unusual, I thought. There was a photo of them all together, though, and Leo wasn't in it. Like, all the sort of ministers and then Chris Heaton-Ars was there and Michelle and Emma Little. And it was like, there's footage of them getting a group photograph taken and it is the saddest 30 seconds you'll ever watch.

Everyone's completely silent. It's so bleak. They're sat in a circle. It's like the saddest game of pass the parcel. Like someone's forgotten the parcel. And Rishi's remembered he's in Northern Ireland so he's really grateful that somebody's forgotten the parcel. It is funny though, he's like

is he now the only kind of Tory that would be recognised even in Northern Ireland it's hard to kind of explain how few votes Tories get here even in kind of small elections and it's hard to exaggerate how little a lot of the time people in England know about Northern Ireland. I was on a tube once and two guys beside me had a newspaper open and it had

the electoral map on it. So you're like red for Labour and blue for Tory and yellow for Lib Dems. And one guy went, oh look, you see, look, the Tories do have one seat in Northern Ireland. It was Loch Nye. I know that wouldn't happen anymore because Loch Nye isn't blue anymore. Now we often hear about politicians never getting anything done,

but within the first sitting of the reassembled Assembly, one MLA achieved his goals. Who and how, anyone? Oh, this is Justin McNulty. Justin McNulty is an MLA. He is the first South Armand man to willingly get into a helicopter. He was suspended for leaving Stormont to go to a Gaelic football match. This is two years after Stormont was collapsed,

and he thought, no, Leash Wexford in Division 4 Gaelic football in Wexford was where he went because he is the manager, the coach of the Leash Gaelic football team. He made such a song and dance about it too. Do you know whenever he was appointed Leash manager about like, it's not going to interfere with my work as an MLA. I'm going to make sure to be there, be present, get everything done. And then literally day one, he scoots out and heads on. That is the most Northern Irish thing anyone has ever done. If you had told me a public representative had lost a whip for using this chopper

and it wasn't Boris Johnson, I would be very surprised. Yes, indeed. Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it's SDLP MLA Justin McNulty in a helicopter bunking off the first historic, symbolically important, politically crucial meeting of the reconvened Assembly No, it's SDLP MLA Justin McNulty in a helicopter bunking off the first historic Symbolically important politically crucial meeting of the reconvened assembly to go to coach his football team. Obviously, we are all human

We all dream of busting out of a building and fleeing to freedom in a helicopter That's just who we are as a species and sports or real life That is a choice that so many of us struggle with some more than others Obviously as my four children, gold, silver, bronze and disappointing can testify. Alex, a question you can have. It's something I've always wondered about. How do you

clean a clock? According to Speaker Edwin Poots. Well, I heard the interview and it was about quarter past eight and I was still in bed and I heard the phrase, I'm going to clean his clock, but I didn't hear the clock bit.

I mean, that can't be right. The Speaker of the Assembly cannot be offering to do some sort of sexual favour for Jim Allister, particularly if you're going to do a sexual favour, don't do it for Jim Allister.

I mean, there's lots of other people you can think of. Apparently, it's an old-fashioned way of saying you're going to deck it. And this is why I hope it does last, because I'm a huge fan of Ed Reardon and Count Arthur Strong and, you know, One Foot in the Grave. I just love the idea of something with Mr Speaker, Speaker Poots and Jim Allister as a sort of running theme for the next

two years or something like that because they despise each other. There is nothing better in politics that you get sort of made up, manipulated, manufactured, sort of not liking each other but this is deep rooted hatred of each other and it is brilliant

to watch and Jim, he speaks slowly so that the anger gets time to seep through and run round the room. But, they had this wonderful discussion in the Assembly about, is cleaning your clock, is it on parliamentary language? Is decking someone on parliamentary

language? Is having a go at someone on parliamentary language? And you just get to the point, just cut the crap and just start beating. Just go. Just start the fight. And then we can make a decision on whether or not it's on parliamentary. Set a precedent that if you really get pissed off

with Jim Allister, just go for it. Well, yes, it's back. The Assembly and Power Sharing Executive have made their long-awaited Elvis-style comeback after two years off. Of course, the first rule of 2020's politics is, where Marcus Rashford goes, politicians inevitably follow. And so Rishi Sunak found himself in Belfast,

whilst people speculated on whether he has a future in his current position. Very Rashford-esque. Sunak urged Northern Ireland's politicians to focus on day-to-day things that matter to people, rather than constitutional change. For example, I don't know, a referendum of membership of a multinational alliance. You cannot let that kind of thing get in the way of ordinary politics. The Northern Ireland Executive Office

has written a letter to the Prime Minister expressing concerns about funding stability and the delivery of public services. A letter. So that should find its way into the Downing Street in-tray some point between next Thursday and Christmas 2025. Are you mighty eager to be believed the post office said it was no problem and they delivered it ages ago?

At the end of that round, the scores are 6 to Neil and Alex and 8 to Dionna and Zoe. We're going to move back to Westminster now. Dionna and Zoe, you can take this. Economically illiterate, environmentally irresponsible and strategically incompetent. Words that could be used to describe so many things. For example, all of human history. But also words used by a Labour MP this week to describe what?

Keir Starmer? Yes, specifically? Because Labour had promised £28 billion per year to be put into the Green Project. The problem with the Labour Party at the moment is they have a massive wide open goal and yet they keep shooting for the stars and missing it completely.

And this was their flagship policy. I think it was the backbone of their manifesto. And up until about two days ago, they were going, no, this is definitely going to happen. Starmo kept saying, this is definitely going to happen. His shadow ministers around him were going, awkward! And now it's not happening.

And they've done it so clumsily, and it's so much smoke being blown up people's bums, and now the whole thing's gone up in flames. It's actually caused more environmental damage than it was going to solve in the first place. To be fair, right, yes, climate change is bad, and global warming's bad and all, but nobody likes it when it's freezing.

Do you know what I mean? Like, maybe Labour is just trying to do us a favour and just give us sort of, like, nicer summers so we don't have to go abroad and they're getting absolutely no thanks for it. I'm off on the green agenda. I drove here in an electric car and it's very fancy.

It comes with all sorts of... You were half an hour late. Yeah, I was. I will admit that, but... Rishi Sunak can't have a go at anybody for their environmental policies given how often he uses private jets, when he can just as easily be delivered himself with an Amazon drone.

Yeah, if he truly cared about green issues, that's the way he'd be travelling around. He'd come over here, northern, flown over by falcon. I'm going to give people the opportunity to shout, there's that falcon, sunak. We've just dragged him down to our 11th one. You've worn me out. I mean, it's quite a bad time.

We had a time when Star was being criticised for the amount of U-turns to basically take his flagship 28 billion pound environmental policy and absolutely Mary Rose it to basically take his flagship £28 billion environmental policy and absolutely Mary Rose it, basically, as flagships go. I mean, is that starting to eat into their support, do you think? Well, I mean... Yes. That's all I have to say on that.

With the general election around the corner, it just seems that, you know, either side is trying to make themselves more and more and more bland, so it becomes that basically it's russian roulette voting in our country you put it on red or blue that is all when your own labor mps are saying about you as a potential prime minister you are taking the party to a point where it is so incredibly bland it stands for nothing it's pretty worrying it worrying. Actually, it's also worrying that there's some things you do which make sense but actually taking a policy like that, which

was popular and is still backed by Rachel Reeve and other key players in the party, there is nothing in that story which is a win for the Labour Party and I really don't understand. But they're scared the same thing is going to happen in 1992, which is that basically the Tories are going to say Labour are going to raise a lot of tax and don't vote for them because they're going to raise tax to pay for this 28 billion quid a year.

That's what they're doing. It's so worrying as well, isn't it, when you think the environment is absolutely one of the massive key issues that we're all going to, our kids are going to face in the very, very near future. And we're saying, well, it's slightly bad for the economy. it's slightly bad for the economy. And you're going, ten years' time when you're sat on your roof at your house because biblical flooding has come down the hill and birds are falling out of the sky because they're simultaneously on fire.

I very much doubt people would be sitting there going, what about the economy? What about growth? I mean, this is absolutely essential that we tackle this. It depends on where you are. If you're in, say, North or East Antrim and they see biblical flooding, they would be like, I told you

so! I should say, for the sake of BBC balance, that there are some people who believe the end of the world is economically justified. Why does the environment ruin such a difficult political issue? Well, let's demonstrate using our Belfast crowd. Who wants to have less money now?

And who wants the planet to be inhabitable in 100 years' time? And there, in an oversimplified nutshell, is why this is such a tricky issue. Good news for StarMist, that a new scientific report just reaching us now has shown that

optimism is bad for the environment. Because people breathing excitedly as they contemplate their hopes for a better future emit up to 20,000% more carbon dioxide than those sitting glumly breathlessly pondering the brutal future to come

Right, I digress. Right, the scores are now 9 to Neil and Alex and let's say 11 11 to Fiona and John. Now, new guidelines for how we write questions for this show on the BBC have been issued this week. As with all BBC guidelines these days, Gary Lineker helped write them for us. So, for this next question,

King Charles revealed his cancer diagnosis on Monday some 37½ years after which former Leicester City striker scored a hat-trick for England against Poland in a crucial World Cup game in Mexico? Is it Gary Lineker? Correct, yes it is. By the way, wish King Charles the best. Anybody who has that diagnosis, wish him the best. Very interesting to see how it was reported here. Belfast Telegraph had King diagnosed with cancer.

The newsletter had King Charles has cancer. Irish News had Armagh 116 Tyrone 12 points. They discovered he had cancer after he went in for an enlarged prostate, wasn't it? Because it's not prostate cancer, but he was being treated for an enlarged prostate. And they knew they had that because he was having to use the throne four or five

times a night. I imagine he got the whole family around and just went, listen, I'm stepping back from my public role for a bit, so you all need to step up. William, Anne, Edward, not you, Zara. It's good when celebrities... Not good that they get cancer, but when people get cancer, people who are well-known, someone like the King,

because it's clear that for the prostate checks, it went up 2,000% or something, the number of people going to seek and a whole series of other things. The trouble is that there's going to be a percentage of those people who go and have those tests and find that they're positive and they're not going to be jumped to the top of a queue. They're not going to be given a private ward. They're going to be told, yeah, you have it, but there's a long list.

It's a slow-moving list. And it's fine and dandy that the celebrities focus attention and so on, but where the attention should be focused is the abysmal state of a health service which is telling people it's critical. You may even die from it, but there's not much we can do for the next two years.

That should be the real story. We've got the dreadful situation back home where people just can't get dentists. Like, literally can't get dentists. People are walking around. Now they're incentivising dentists to work in areas that are so... They call them dentist deserts by giving them £20,000 a year. And I just wondered, does the government sneak in at night

and just slip it under the dentist's pillow? You can't get to a dentist. It was on the news last night. People queuing for hours. You can't get fillings or extractions. Good luck getting braces, I'll tell you that. It's like living west of the band here. You can't get train tracks.

People are probably making their own dentures, which is like, that's Victorian, you know, whittling wooden teeth. Or what I like, that's Victorian, you know, whittling wooden teeth. Or what I think I would do is, you know, when you just flip over the back of an orange peel, they're very effective, actually. They can look quite good. Sort of like a sort of home job Essex veneer. But it is increasing tensions between people

who have access to this sort of excellent dentistry and people who don't. Like, Ryland has been taken into protective custody. Yeah, well, we, of course, wish the king and all those suffering from cancer and their loved ones well. I would also like to take this opportunity to criticise Pandora, the ancient Greek mythical woman

who, of course, brought all diseases into the world by opening her special box. That was a game show that went very badly wrong. The king has been praised for his openness about the illness and for doing his bit to help raise awareness of the need to look for danger signs and get checked up, just like his mummy did her bit to set an example of how we're

all going to have to work until we're 96. Right, at the end of this week's news quiz, our winners are Deona and Zoe with 14 and Neil and Alex have 13. Some breaking news just recently. It's just been announced that a new faction within the Conservative Party

is to be launched in three seconds time by former Nano Prime Minister Liz Truss alongside backbencher Drellard Butt-Clark who we are hearing has just left the faction which has now disbanded. God, it's so efficient now, hasn't it? Thank you for listening to the News Quiz.

I've been Andy Zaltzman. Goodbye! Taking part in the News Quiz was Zoe Lyons, Neil Delamere, Diona Doherty and Alex Kane. In the chair was Andy Zaltzman and additional material was written by Cody Darla, Alison Spittel, John Meagher and Clare Sullivan. The producer was Sam Holmes, and it was a BBC Studios production for Radio 4.

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