Asylum seekers... Coming to a middle-class area near you!

0:02The Telegraph.

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1:11Hello and welcome to The Weekend Tea with me, Poppy Coburn.

1:15Poppy Coburn: And me, Michael Deacon. We've finally been reunited after various holidays, so we've got lots to talk about.

1:31I'm going to ask you a very personal question, Michael. I'm feeling nervous.

1:34Poppy Coburn: Yeah, I am now. You should be nervous. You should be nervous. Do you live in a middle-class area? Well, that's a good question. I live in a place called Gravesend, you know, which it's not a very middle-class sounding name, is it? No, but it is Kent. It is in Kent. That's quite middle-class, isn't it? Well, hang on a minute. It's a home county. You've clearly not been to many parts of Kent, my dear. I'm an Essex girl. Well, look, we're both home counties that God would rather forget about. And why are you asking me about my beautiful neighborhood? Well, I'm asking. Actually, I'm really accusing you, Michael.

2:04Do you think you've taken your fair share of us Highland Seekers?

2:06Poppy Coburn: Me personally? Yes. I've got to admit I personally have not taken an awful lot of them. No, it's not a huge number. Well, I think that's absolutely disgraceful because our wonderful Prime Minister, the King in the North, who has come down south and is now giving us plenty of orders about how we need to organise our country, has said that middle-class areas of Britain like Gravesend in Kent, need to take more asylum seekers and has framed it as them taking their fair share. Their fair share. It's gone down pretty poorly, I think we can say. Well, certainly with the people in the middle class areas.

2:36Poppy Coburn: Yes, exactly. Yes, OK. Well, as I say, as far as Gravesend's concerned, I mean, because it's such an ugly name, I'm hoping that Andy Burnham will look at that on a map and think, oh, no, that sounds like a lower class place. That's not good enough for my wonderful asylum seekers. I think they've got higher standards than that. Yes, Sevenoaks is more like it. Sevenoaks, there we go. We'll put them all in Sevenoaks. Sandwich, maybe. Oh, delightful. The Earl on Sandwich. And now the living space for lots of men from Sudan. I mean, this has gone down very badly. And I think because Andy Burnham was trying to do the thing he's done with the North-South divide, which is what if he just turned the country against each other?

3:09So, Northerners are saying we're resentful of Southerners and Southerners are going, hang on, it's not our fault. The country is in a bad spot. I think he was trying to do the same thing with class and turn it into a class warfare issue. so basically like oh all these working class areas have had loads of migrant hotels which is true now we're going to put the middle class ones the main problem though is that he's not closing down the asylum hotels in the working class areas he's just putting them in hmos or other military bases so the working class areas will still have the asylum seekers but they'll also be in oxfordshire

3:41Poppy Coburn: so nobody really wins from this i appreciate this is very unpopular i've got to say i think there is one great benefit to this, which is that an awful lot of people who claim to support asylum seekers and always chanting refugees are welcome here, they themselves tend to live in areas with actually very little immigration of any kind, never mind illegal immigration. And I think there's only way we're ever going to change these people's minds and make them realise why the rest of the country is so happy and show them the downsides of this. And that is to give these people what they claim to want.

4:15Poppy Coburn: So yes, move lots of illegal immigrants into their area and then we'll see if they change their chin because they usually do. We've seen this with certain left-wing politicians already. Rachel Millwood, the deputy leader of the Greens, who fought against 600 male asylum seekers being placed in her area of East Sussex. There's a Lib Dem MP called Callum Miller who has fought against 1 ,200 male asylum seekers being put at a camp in his area of Oxfordshire. And now here's a new one for you. This is just this week, OK? Now, there's a Labour MP, very much in the Labour left, she's called Rachel Maskell, OK?

4:45Poppy Coburn: She's taken part in a lot of pro-refugee protests in the past. And there was one she took part in a few years ago where she accused the then Tory government of not taking in enough refugees. I'm going to quote from her here, OK? She said, 20 ,000 is not enough. 30 ,000 is not enough. We should keep going until we hit our saturation point because what does it matter if we have to wait another week for a hospital visit or if our class sizes are slightly bigger or if our city slightly further? Are you making this up? This can't be real. This is a real quote. It's from 2015 at a rally. She confirmed after this it was real.

5:14Poppy Coburn: What does it matter if things are slightly more challenging? If we have to pay a little bit more into the system, surely it is worth it. OK, that's Rachel Maskell, left-wing Labour MP, speaking 2015. Now let's have a look at what she's saying this week. I'm reading for a news report in another paper. The Labour MP, Rachel Maskell, has warned that a plan to move more than 1 ,000 asylum seekers next to a small Yorkshire village in her constituency is unsuitable. It will create a ratio of six men to every woman. She cited shortages of water, sewage capacity and electricity that would put a huge demand on infrastructure.

5:44Poppy Coburn: She also added that the base was situated next to a primary school and a nursery. So she is very strongly against that. Oh, Michael, it looks like we've hit saturation point. How inconvenient. Just when they were about to be moved into her constituency, lo and behold, the country's full and we can't take any more. There you go. So this is why I say this is the only way you can hope to change these people's minds. OK, so we've got a lesson now. Just to make them face the consequences of their own beliefs. Let's put all of the asylum seekers who are currently in Blackpool in Bristol and Brighton.

6:11Then everyone's happy.

6:12Poppy Coburn: And you're for Rachel Maskell. And of course, let's make sure we save some people for Rachel Maskell. Because, I mean, look, if she thought 20 ,000, 30 ,000 weren't enough, I don't know why she's calling about 1 ,000. I'm sure we can rustle up another 30 ,000 for you, Rachel, if you're not happy with just that 1 ,000. Let's send them directly to our house. I'm sure she can live in up her heart. We in Gravesend would be happy to spare them. No, we are willing to make that sacrifice just for you, Rachel. Well, let's go back to Andy Burnham, because I think we've missed out on quite a few stories while you've been away and I've been away.

6:39He has done something that might make you happy, depending on how you feel about Turkish barbers and vape shops. He's cracking down on all of these perhaps money laundering fronts that you see on the high street. He's trying to clean up our national heritage. Are you in favour? Are you against?

6:54Poppy Coburn: I've got to be honest here. I think saving our high streets is not realistic, whatever you do, because I think we've got to face facts. You know, why have our high streets died? It's because of us. Yeah, we like that. We've chosen this. Initially, first we decided we wanted to go to big supermarkets. Then we liked out-of-town shopping malls. And then ultimately, yes, we decided to order everything on the internet. So, of course, all the high street businesses go bust. And what are we left with? Well, barbershops, because you can't order a haircut off Amazon. And vape shops. Yeah, sort of grubby little places like that.

7:23Poppy Coburn: These are the only businesses that will fill in the gaps. So, I think any plan he's got is doomed, frankly. Having said that, I do hate vaping, though. You hate vaping? It's disgusting. I know even Angela Rayner, who is a well-known vapor, even she has admitted her own children tell her it's disgusting, it's awful, and she wants to give it up, but she really struggles to give up. I think it's awful, by the way. But in a way, I blame the government because, you know what, this is why they should not have effectively banned tobacco smoking. You know, the next generation of children will never legally be able to smoke tobacco in their lives.

7:56Poppy Coburn: I think that's a great mistake. The fact is, when this country was great a very, very long time ago, all of our politicians smoked pipes or they smoked cigars. And didn't they look serious and dignified? They had snuff boxes as well. Snuff boxes, there you go. And see how we've declined. Now we've got Angela Rayner. Puffing on that massive vape in the famous photo. Think of Winston Churchill, OK? Never seen without a cigar. Now imagine if all the pictures of him, he had been puffing on a bright pink vape. Now, he'd still be a national hero, but it wouldn't be the same, would it? Oh, I would. No, come on.

8:31This is a wonderful image. You know, Winston Churchill doing the we will find them on the beaches. And he's just puffing on a strawberry watermelon lost Mary. Oh, OK, fine. Fine. I'm not winning you over. Well, how about some happy news? The cellular eclipse. Did you see it? I did, yes. Once in a lifetime?

8:46Poppy Coburn: Yeah, went up with the family up to a hill near our house. We had the proper little glasses and things like that. Did he key for three hours to get them? I did hear some reports. No, a friend had some spare and actually lent them to us. And it was, yeah, very, very helpful. Although I must say, I know a lot of people are saying they've been a bit underwhelmed by the eclipse. I'm one of them. You were one of them. Yeah. Why was that? Well, I mean, it's not a proper eclipse, is it? It's a partial eclipse. And it turns out that when there's a partial eclipse, because the sun is so incredibly powerful, it doesn't really get very dark.

9:19I wasn't one of the people that had sunglasses. I was doing the Donald Trump. So I was just looking up there like, oh, yeah, I can kind of see it. my eyes hurt now um and and it was a bit underwhelming i was watching lots of people take

9:29Poppy Coburn: photos of of it and i was like yeah well i'd say my son was a bit like that now he's 12 year old this is his first eclipse and he was really excited beforehand because i think he had this idea in his head that the entire world was just going to go pitch black yes but in fact it just sort of dimmed a bit so he was disappointed but i did have to explain to him that that's not a total eclipse of the sun and in fact the next total eclipse of the sun in the uk is not due until the year 2090, when he will be 76, and I'll be 110. So I'm happy to put a date in the diary now, but I can't guarantee to make it.

9:59Well, hopefully technology at that point will mean you can just fly to Mars and watch it directly from a better view.

10:04Poppy Coburn: Well, fingers crossed. Well, still to come, let's talk about sex with Nicola Sturgeon and squat toilets.

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11:33Michael, I have a bit of news to share with you. I'm just going to read it aloud. I want to get your honest reaction here. Sturgeon should stop teasing that she is a lesbian, says former colleague.

11:43Poppy Coburn: Right. Yes, I saw this story. This is about Joanna Cherry. Now, she is a former SNP politician, just like Nicola Sturgeon. And she, I mean Joanna Cherry, happens to be a lesbian. And she is suggesting that her former leader should be a bit clearer about her sexuality. Pride. Yeah, it's all about pride nowadays. I think that's what she's saying. I quite know what she means by teasing that she's a lesbian. I don't think I've seen that video. But what I would say is this. I don't want to hear any kind of unfair insinuations that Nicola Sturgeon is secretly gay. I do not believe it. Let's bear in mind, this is a woman who was recently broken up with her beloved husband of Medea's Peter Murrell.

12:23Poppy Coburn: And it takes a long time to get over a marriage breakup. But particularly, you know, when you've been married to a man as wonderful as Peter Murrell. I mean, what a romantic husband. He was constantly showering his wife with expensive presents, you know. And, OK, maybe at the time she didn't fully appreciate those gifts. In fact, I believe she didn't necessarily see them. I don't know why she didn't see them. Maybe she'd been staring at an eclipse. But at any rate, perhaps now, now that they're no longer together, she's starting to feel a little bit of remorse. They're starting to miss him and think, where on earth am I going to meet a man like Peter Murrell?

12:54Poppy Coburn: And let's be honest, how many women in the world can say they've ever been married to a man like Peter Murrell? He will do anything for a woman. He has a great taste in Le Creuset mugs. There you are. Yeah, he's a very stylish man. He's got great taste in all kinds of things. sent you. He would do anything for a woman. Up to and including going to prison, I believe. Someone needs to read this headline. Hard to follow. Someone needs to read this headline to Peter Morrill and get his live reaction on this, because that's going to be pretty brutal for him. First of all, you go through a separation, you end up in jail, you're totally humiliated in front of the entire country, and then your ex-wife starts teasing that she might be a lesbian.

13:29Poppy Coburn: Okay, well, I don't know what his visiting hours are. If you want to wait till he's fully available, I believe it'll take about five years. But anyway, we'll keep that in our notes for later. I want to speak to you about your column, Michael. Do you? Yes, I do, because I completely agree with you. We don't agree on everything. But you are right on the absolute menace of yobs playing things out loud on public transportation. Oh, yes. Specifically buses. Yes. Now, the reason I wrote about this, there was an article on the BBC News website in this, And they'd spoken to a leading academic who had argued that actually playing music out loud on the bus or train is not antisocial.

14:06Poppy Coburn: In fact, she says the opposite. And I'm going to quote her here to make sure I get this right. This is Professor Orla Muldoon, who is the head of the School of Psychology at Queen's University, Belfast, at Topham University. And she says, it is quintessentially social to play music and hope your peers appreciate that music. So I don't mean to sound cynical here, but I'm not entirely sure that that is what these young men in particular are doing. You know, you get some sort of teenage neat and he's sitting on the bus. He gets his phone out and he looks around at all these poor middle aged people who have to work for a living.

14:37Poppy Coburn: And he thinks, oh, these poor people, I just feel sorry for them. But I know what I'll cheer them up. If I just blast out a bit of drill rap about some young drug dealer stabbing a schoolboy to death for looking at him funny in the queue for fried chicken or something. They'll appreciate that, won't they? It's great. I just want to share my innocent appreciation for greater. Michael, you just need to do this yourself. You need to get Flight of the Valkyries and just put full volume on your phone and look around at London commuters and saying, hello, I'm being social. Should we have a discussion about this very weird thing that I'm doing?

15:07Poppy Coburn: Well, I think I would do that, but only in the circumstances where there's already a young man blasting out his own music. I'm going to get out my music. I'm going to put it at an even higher volume. I just want to see what he says and experiment as if he says, yeah, mate, come on, that's a bit inconsiderate. That's a bit selfish. How dare you? I haven't got any headphones. Yeah, let's see. Come on, man. I have to say, I do love that the BBC always seems to have a pipeline of academics. I'm doing very big square quotes around academics. He always seemed to have the most stupid line possible for this.

15:35And so I wasn't particularly surprised when I read a story that we now officially have a degree, get this, in wokery. We're not pretending that these fake degrees are just woke degrees. No, no, no. You can actually do a Bachelor of Arts in woke.

15:49Poppy Coburn: And that's the actual title? That's the official title of the degree? Bachelor of Arts in Wokeery. Are you sure about this? I mean, I didn't realise that was the actual title. Mum, Dad, I'm doing... No, no, I am slightly taking the mickey. You don't actually get to go to your parents and say, Mum, Dad, I'm doing a degree in Woke. Right. And I got a first. OK. And I'm going to immediately go work for the civil service. No. I think this is... Yes, I think... I'll find the title here. This is a degree now being offered at Brighton University. What a surprise. On the nose. It's actually a BA in Politics, Sexuality and Gender.

16:16Poppy Coburn: What Brighton is offering in this course, It says it takes a decolonised approach. It covers everything from anarchism to imperialism to environmental politics. Students will explore feminist queer and trans politics while being introduced to historical and contemporary struggles around sexuality and gender. It's right. It says here this is the first ever degree in wokely. That sounds like about 50 % of university degrees that already exist these days. Isn't that what they pretty much all study now? I think they're really desperate for a selling point, aren't they? I guess we're more overt that you're not going to get a job after university.

16:45I mean, it just goes straight to the McDonald's bin. As soon as you graduate, they just hand you the uniform. They say, good luck, have fun.

16:51Poppy Coburn: Yeah, well, of course, it was A-level results day this week. Yes. And I just want to congratulate my niece, Lily, who's got the results she wanted. And she's going to university not to study Woke Group, to study medicine. And on the whole, I think there's probably more of a long-term future in that, I'm guessing. Yeah, I did enjoy A-level results day because I actually got some targeted advertisements when I was logging into my work computer, which was University of Nottingham clearing spots. And I was like, well, I am 26, so I'm a little bit beyond the point where I'm worrying about my A-level results.

17:23But maybe this suggests that university finances aren't doing so fantastically well that they're targeting me.

17:28Poppy Coburn: Well, they've clearly not been listening to this podcast and hearing you saying that nobody should go to university. It's a total waste of time for everybody. Look,£50 ,000 of student debt. Let's double it. All or nothing, I'm going back. If I'm not a millionaire by the end of it, well then I'll be crying again about how much I know. Well, good luck at Brian. Another very good story that immediately just makes you angry because I think everyone has had an encounter like this, although perhaps not as extreme in the way that the airline responded. So a flight has been cancelled in Canada because a child refused to take their seat.

18:01A child refused to take their seat on this flight.

18:05Poppy Coburn: And that was it. And supposedly the airline staff were trying to get this child into the seat, but presumably the parents were. I mean, I'd like to think they were making an effort. Well, that's the question, is it not, Michael? You get some pretty useless parents around on flights these days, as I'm sure we've all experienced. But the response was, oh, well, since we can't get the child in the seatbelt, well, we're just going to ground the flight and everybody's gone. I mean, I find that completely baffling. But I've got to say, I do have an answer. I do have a solution, which I will propose, which is that in future, on airlines, all seats should be ejector seats, OK?

18:36Poppy Coburn: And you get some unspeakable, spoiled little six-year-old brat. He's refusing to put his seatbelt on. Estuartess, press the button, fire him straight into the sun. No problem. And if the parents kick up a fuss just because he fired their idiotic child into the sky, right? Press the button, press the button. Off you go. Now, what's wrong with that? I think that would be, it would be popular with other passengers. It means flights wouldn't have to be cancelled. People wouldn't miss out on their holidays or whatever. Less fuel emissions as well, lighter plane. There you go. Greta Thunberg will be happy.

19:10Poppy Coburn: Good, good, good for the environment. Only thing that does worry me slightly about this plan, if Michael O 'Leary finds out about this, you know that Ryanair will suddenly have ejector seats if you don't pay the extra£12 for selecting a seat on the flight. It's like a random chance. You pay your surcharge and you get your guaranteed seat so you know where you're sitting in. Or you don't pay it and there's a 1 in 100 chance that you're not going to make it to your destination. You've been at your final destination. Well, I just think the lesson this week is flying by plane. I mean, it's mugs anyway, travelling by plane.

19:40Poppy Coburn: You know, you want to get on one of these enormous new mega dinghies they have. Now, they're fantastic and they're big enough. They can take an entire sort of plane load of people at once. So from now on, on my holidays, I'm getting one of these mega dinghies. It's probably cheaper and more reliable. No delays. It's straight there. And you don't even bother bringing your passport. There might be a key. There's so many people that are coming through the border. Well, there you go. That's the only downside. Sorry, I'm going to have to take a turn towards the scatological. Right. Squatline toilets.

20:04Sorry, that's a horrible image I've just put in your mind, Michael.

20:07Poppy Coburn: Yes, are we sure we should be talking about toilets? I mean, or lavatories, as we are supposed to say, according to the Telegraph style guide. Pardon me, lavatories, or possibly lose is acceptable. I appreciate that probably quite a lot of people watch this podcast after they've just had their breakfast, so I do apologise. But there is a reason for talking about it, which is that in Cambridge, the local Labour Council has just opened some special new lavatories for visitors from the Far East, who apparently prefer to have special squat from our Western arrangements. And they're charging one pound of time for that.

20:35Poppy Coburn: And I know that a lot of people, certainly a lot of our readers online have criticised this because they think it's PC gone mad and all the rest of it. And foreign visitors should adapt to our ways, which I understand. But actually, I'm going to have to defend this decision because the fact is nowadays you do get signs in some public toilets urging visitors, begging them not to climb onto the loo seat and squat directly on it because there have been so many stories of broken loosies because you get visitors from far eastern countries actually attempting that in our western loos. And so, I mean, at least in Cambridge, you're thinking, right, well, this will stop them from breaking our loos and we're charging them into the bargain as well.

21:18Everybody wins. Thank you for giving me that lovely image. As if using a public toilet isn't unpleasant enough, now you have to worry that someone's put their dirty trainees onto the sea. I mean, to be fair, if we're talking about cultural sensitivity, when I did go travelling around Asia, they will usually have a seated toilet for strange Westerners, barbarics who want to use the Golden Throne. And they don't charge you for it, which maybe implies that the Far Eastern economies and China are doing slightly better than us, that we're having to literally take money from people for spending a penny.

21:51Poppy Coburn: We really can't. We need every pound we can get in this country. Straight to the treasury. This is probably one of Rachel Reeves' wonderful schemes. Can't believe she's out of government. Oh, I miss her. I have to finish with our favourite silly season story. I'm absolutely obsessed with this. And the photos really do do it justice. Oh, wonderful, wonderful. I feel motherly towards them. The nature reserve manager sharing her office with a wasp nest. Yes, yes. This is a story in The Guardian, isn't it? Where else? Indeed. I mean, this is a classic version of what gets called suicidal empathy these days.

22:21Poppy Coburn: basically this woman found that some wasps had built the most enormous nest in her office and instead of you know getting some pest controllers in to get rid of it she decided no she was going to be compassionate and try and share her office with the wasps in fact i'm going to quote here she says my first thought was oh no i have to get rid of that now but then i realized wait why why do i have to do that well dear i don't know if you're familiar with wasps but something they like to do is sting people and when there's lots of them lots of things Thank you. But anyway, she decided she was going to do that.

22:52Poppy Coburn: She was going to be inclusive and compassionate, all the rest of it. So it says she adapted. She just opened the window so the wasps could come and go as they pleased. And she says, the wasps, they're fine with me being there. The longer I'm there, the more I feel relaxed being alongside them. The wasps are fine with her being there. You think this is the wasps office? And she's renting some space from there. She's renting a desk. She's hot desking in there. She saw their permission and they very generously granted it. That's very kind of you, Mr Wasp, for letting me sit in my office and do the work that I'm supposed to do.

23:24Poppy Coburn: Yeah, indeed. The more I read this, I thought, is this story real? Or is this a kind of parable about left-wing views of illegal immigration? Because basically her message seems to be, we must allow the wasps to live alongside us. They've just as much right to live here as we have. They won't hurt us as long as we give them everything they want. Michael, the stingings are isolated incidents. And there are absolutely no lessons that you can draw about wasp behaviour from whenever that happens. When people claim they have been stung, they are just stirring up division. Anti-wasp bigotry. There we are.

23:56Poppy Coburn: It's the far right. The far right are to blame here. Well, stay tuned for more Silly Season stories and we will join you again next week.

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