Keir Starmer, Jess Phillips, BBC Bullies | Plank Of The Week With Mike Graham | 20-June-25

Live from London it's Plank of the Week with Mike Graham. Good evening and welcome to Plank of the Week. It is the one show where every single Friday night we take everybody to task that has done something plankish. Quite frankly I don't think an hour is enough so we're currently lobbying the bosses to see if we can make it a three-hour show. Obviously that's what we need. Jeremy Carl is back ladies and gentlemen, well done. He's been away, he's been very busy, looking very tanned and relaxed. So happy to be on that favourite show. Very good to see you. Samara Gillis here of course, Howard Cox as well. Jeremy, over to you. Well this won't be a surprise. We've been talking about this all week. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you a secure, dreary starmer, Plank of the Week. There are a few things that we've talked about, Mikey, over the last couple of years on this station which get you goat. None more so than the ludicrous, vile, heinous admission by this government this week that actually the grooming gangs, let's call them what they are, rape gangs, it is real, it has been pushed under every piece of carpet by it seems every part of the institution in this country, be it police officers, local council officials, social service workers, politicians, you name the few. But it was starmer, wasn't it, back in January when all these people who were doing this, they're just some far-right bandwagon. He had that Lucy Powell, the leader of the Commons saying dog whistle politics. The fact of the matter is I said it, I make no apology for this. Even Mrs Balls had to admit the majority of the perpetrators are British Pakistani men Muslim men, a large number. Oh, there's a surprise, are illegal migrants. We don't know who the hell we're letting into our country. Even the Labour Party have to admit this. And for him to have just gone, do you know what? Just right-wing politics. I would love Keir Starmer to go upstairs in 10 Downing Street if his kids live with him anymore and go up to his 14-year-old daughter while she's doing her homework at night and think, do you know what? I wonder what I would do as a father if you've been raped by a man. I don't care about the colour of your skin or where you come from. Somebody who thinks it's OK or an institution or a being that puts that under the carpet doesn't have a place in the country I want to live in. Sorry, but I feel so strongly about it. Very well said. I think we all agree. Let's have a look at what Kerry Badenock had to say. Three times, Mr Speaker, these Labour MPs voted against the National Acquired. They voted against it three times. Liberal Democrats didn't bother to vote at all. Didn't bother to vote at all. Asleep at the wheel. They were so vociferous back in January. We were playing it all week as well. Wes Streeting, Yvette Cooper, every single cabinet minister you could think of saying, well, we don't need a National Inquiry because we've already had one, and even though we haven't already had one, everybody knows that there's no point in doing one anymore because we just don't have the room for it. At this moment, we're all so pulled back. We don't know who's responsible. We wonder whether it's a cover-up. There was a great leader in the Sun this week. I don't wonder whether it was a cover-up. I know there was a cover-up. But for Starmer, this is the real question, I think. This is why I nominated him this week. Did this man turn a blind eye to these heinous crimes simply because he was concerned about Labour losing the Muslim vote? Because that has to be asked. It has to be asked. After the last election. It can be asked and answered. That's precisely why they didn't want to have a National Inquiry. You're trading kids then for that. Not enough people talk about the fact that this National Inquiry will hopefully expose the shocking level of corruption and vandalism and voter fraud. That's why Labour didn't want an inquiry. Because Labour councillors in the north of England were beholden to the Muslim vote. And in exchange for getting that Muslim vote, it was understood that they would not only be covered up, but actually that they would allow even people who they knew to be perpetrators to remain in the Labour Party, some of whom actually did go to prison. And even we had a guy called Raj Amir on my think tank, The New Culture Forum, a great whistleblower, who told us how Muslim leaders sent out people to Muslim voters' houses to get their postal votes. They just signed them. And these blank postal votes were then sent. And masses were signed off for Labour MPs and Labour councillors. And I think this is part of the reason why they had local council-led inquiries. It's a whole... To have the councils mark their own homework. Don't you think it says an awful lot about this man and this station? Long before I was doing it, he would have been called a racist three years ago. Nigel Farage said this in 2014. It is not racist. It is a known fact. And it is disgusting. And it has no place. Yeah, but it's emblematic of his also very lawyer-y attitude. He didn't listen to the hundreds of thousands of white working-class girls. All he listened to was Baroness Casey, who obviously had Labour affiliations. She delivered, though. Yes, but she had to put together a 200-page report for him to even listen, which just shows how clinical he is. And I don't think he expected... And he didn't expect it to say what it said. I think he wanted her to bury it and to come back and go, you know what, you're absolutely right, Keir Starmer, once again, we don't need a national inquiry. And she actually said, I could not believe, just by scratching the surface, the level of the depravity. And I... Just, sorry, you know all those activists, all those people that go on all the time, they talk about Gaza, they talk about women's rights, they talk about transgenders, they talk about, oh, you're being anti-Muslim. I would like them to be on a show like this, to look them in the eyes and go, you have an eight-year-old daughter or an eight-year-old sister, and she's been raped. You wouldn't have the same opinion. No, absolutely not. And this involves the police, it involves social care, it involves councils, it involves also the Tory government for years being silent. People need to lose their jobs, lose their pensions and go to prison. Yeah, it also includes some current Labour MPs. Howard, you must have been as shocked as I was when you saw Sean Davis, the MP for Telford, getting up in the House of Commons yesterday and basically saying that Amber Rudd prevented him from doing an inquiry into the grooming gangs of Telford. When in fact, he'd actually written a letter to Amber Rudd and signed it when he was the leader of Telford Council, telling her not to do one because it wasn't necessary. Yeah, absolutely right. And not only that, I mean, we know they've traded votes. That's as simple as that for children's lives and victims, you call them, you know, or survivors, they all call it that sort of thing. But it's also happened, you were talking about voter fraud, there's no doubt, it's happened in London. I've got actually examples of it. I wouldn't have won, I know I wouldn't have done, but I would have got a lot more. And I know for the fact, he got probably about two to 3% of his 18% actually fiddled, no problem at all. Well, I'm sorry. No, I was just about to say the whole thing. I mean, I listen to you guys, I've been in tears. My wife and I have sat, looked at things. And you look at Maggie Oliver and what she's been doing. She should be a Dame now for those sorts of things. When you see David Beckham and Sadiq Khan, which you did last week, I know. But the fact is, these people have done this out of the goodness, because they're good people. These Labour politicians, these Labour councillors are not good people. No, they really aren't. Let's have a look at Jess Phillips. You can take a view on whether she's a good person or not. Here's what she said this week. People have turned a blind eye. There's no doubt, I'm not denying that. Including you? Absolutely not, mate. I have never turned a blind eye. I never would shy away from calling a problem what it is. Oh, really? So this is a woman... She's actually rewriting history now. This is one of my big thing about women's rights, about stalking and all that. She's the one that was trolled out just before the Easter recess. 45 minutes to say we're not having a national inquiry, we're having local inquiries. Why didn't that journalist say to her, hold on a second, love, if you care so much, why didn't you fight or resign or say, I'm not leaving your office until we have a national inquiry? They're all the same. Jeremy, this is one of the problems. The mainstream media have allowed them to get away with this. Right across the country, the independent media and a lot of the podcasts and you guys, and I'm sorry to say GB News, but these... Don't be sorry. Well, I'm just saying, you know, Charlie Peters has done a crack. Yeah, he has. Those are the sorts of people that have done a good job. But where have been the big names in the papers? Where have they been? Well, the day before the Casey report came out, the day before News at Ten on BBC One did an expose on the grooming gangs, I sat there and said, finally, and it was a girl talking about this group of white men. This group of white men, yeah. The day before this comes out, the amount of gaslighting that's going on here, unbelievable. Even Dan Hodges, who used to be, you know, I've actually groomed him, if you pardon the expression, because he's now gone from supporting Labour to absolutely attacking them all the time. And he today, this week, wrote a piece in the mail where he says Starmer's known about this for 10 years. Don't pretend that he didn't. And it's rotting at the heart of Labour. I think that's my point. As soon as you open that door, you smell the rotting fish. And that's where it's all coming from. I think that's the point. I just don't understand how any person thinks that it's OK to hide that. I know, it's absolutely rotten. Let's have a look at what Baroness Casey, who wrote the report, had to say this week about the cover-up. I was following through on a children's file, an archived child's, and found the word Pakistani tippexed out. And I thought, whoever did that inadvertently was giving ammunition to the English Defence League. If good people don't grasp difficult things, bad people will. And there we are. That's great. Anyway, what a story. And let's hope, and we're going to have to keep the pressure up on these people, because, you know, Starmer would love nothing more for this to go away. He's going to try and make it happen, but we're going to try and stop him. Samara, over to you. You've got Kent County Council. Yes, Kent County Council. They have been sort of responsible for a lot of egregious wastages of taxpayers' money. But I think what Doge has uncovered this week is some of the worst that I've actually seen. I mean, I've had to get it down here, because it's bowling, it's trampolining, cinema trips, purchases at JD Sports and PC World. This is for asylum seekers. Yeah, migrants. This is not for people who pay their taxes into the community. This isn't for disadvantaged children or anything like that. No, no, it's for asylum seekers, illegal migrants who break into this country and then are given all these things. And then also TV licences. TV licences, yeah. TV licences, things that we break down granny's doors to get them to pay. Oh, you can have it for free if you come here on a boat. I mean, it's absolutely ridiculous. And I think the public outrage is because we're not even in a moment of prosperity this country. If we were, maybe if the streets were paved with boats. Yeah, if we had loads of money. Yeah, but even if we weren't, we probably shouldn't be giving out this stuff. I mean, like Australia does not do that. And the issue is that this system of enticement really, really motivates people to get on those boats and come over. And just as you said to me before the show, 40,000 is what we've crossed. And it is getting more and more and more because are we so silly to think that they don't have phones? They're not telling each other, yeah, this is what I'm getting here. Look at these benefits. They aren't really free phones, aren't they? Well, they're putting things on TikTok all the time, aren't they? This is great, you know, seeing pictures of the hotel room, pictures of the free food, pictures of, you know, the bus that takes them into town. I mean, last year there was a crew, the crowd of them all got taken to Anfield and shown around the Liverpool Football Stadium. They talk about a deterrent. It's quite an expensive thing to do. They talk about a deterrent. We've had all the arguments about Rwanda and processing offshore. To me, it's really, really simple. It's a really simple deterrent. Stop making it so bloody attractive to come here to the detriment of the British people, because we're just apologies now. We're still apologising, but we're not, we're skimped. We can't even afford the interest on the debts we've got. It's ludicrous. And British people are skimped. People are putting alarm clocks on every day. They want to go to work. They want to pay their taxes and do the right thing. And they probably wouldn't be able to afford trampolining lessons for their own children. Who needs trampolining lessons anyway? I mean, you jump on a trampoline, you jump up and down, you go up and down. I bought my son a trampoline this morning, genuinely, from Argos. Does he need lessons? No, just jump bounce up and down. Jump up and down, do a couple of somersaults. Even the French are saying, make Britain less attractive than France, and they'll stop coming. It's not rocket science, you know. Empty all the migrant hotels and private accommodation. Temporary refugee camps up in the Orkneys on some windswept island. No internet access, none of that stuff. You know, my mother's cousins came over in the Second World War. They lived from Poland. They lived for years in a refugee camp and got married. They were young girls. If it was good enough for them, if it's good enough for our British army boys to live in barracks and tents, why can't these chaps do it? I'll tell you what, the French this week took a new tactic, though. They actually started firing tear gas at them, right? Which apparently had the completely wrong effect, though, because they all ran away from the beach where the tear gas was, into the water where the boats were. How about we get some tear gas? When they come to Dover, we start firing tear gas at them so they keep away. I think it's pretty simple. I'd send the Royal Navy into the Channel. I'd turn around three boats. I would absolutely say you're getting jacked, and if you arrive here illegally, you're going to the Falklands or the Orkney Islands. And, you know, you talk about the British people. We've talked about this all week. We're not advocating anything. I honestly think we're at a crossroads. I think the British people have had enough. I think they've spent years being told, we're the fairest. We're morally right. We should do this. We should do that. We're skint. We can't. Charity, unfortunately, now begins at home. And the fact of the matter is, if you've lived your life correctly and paid your taxes and never broken the law, you're thinking, why the hell did I do that? Because I'm back at the bleak view. Didn't the Kent County Council know this, all revealed by Zia and the reform team, didn't they, that it's their doge? It is their doge. And we've got a clip. Let's have a look. Do you think your taxpayers' money should be spent taking asylum seekers trampolining? How about skateboarding? Well, that's what Kent County Council has been up to. They've also been doing trips to the cinema, trips bowling and crazy golf, all out of the asylum budget. I mean, there's a reason that Kent is now reform-led, because talk actually broke the exclusive that we were also paying £33,000 of taxpayers' money for asylum seekers to have driving lessons. I mean, there is that stuff that most normal civilians these days in their own council can't afford. It cannot go on. We had a story this week about the free flying lessons. We had a guy up in Scotland who said, yeah, we've had a few migrants in getting free. They weren't, to be fair, they weren't sure exactly who was paying for it, but somebody's paying for it. And giving them free flying lessons doesn't seem like a great idea to me, given what happened on 9th and 11th. You've got a bit of history there. I had a bloke on this week, he said... What do you mean you don't want to learn how to land? LAUGHTER That's true. I had a bloke on this week and he said, can you give me some advice, genuinely? I said, what, he said, I'm having a terrible time. I look at this migrant situation. He said, I've got divorced, it wasn't my fault, but I've lost most of everything. I've lost my home, I've lost my kids. What am I going to do? And you feel like saying, tell you what, spend your last 100 quid on Eurostar, go to Calais, get a boat and come back, because you'll be treated better than if you've lived here all your life. I know. It is shocking. It's terrible. Do you remember that scene in The Deer Hunter, where they had them in those cages underwater? We could do that, couldn't we? Yeah, what's wrong with that? Set it up around Dover Harbour and go, OK, I'm afraid you're going to have to stay here for a while, because they've never got any more room. So when you've been here for about a month, we'll move you on to land and see how many of them come there. That's a deterrent. Yeah, that's a proper deterrent. My plan has been old cruise ships in the channels. Yeah. They never set foot on the soil. They get picked up, put onto a cruise ship, when it's full up, send it off to a British overseas territory like South Georgia. Yeah. Yes. No legal issues like Rwanda. Take about a year. And after a couple of those have gone off, the message will go out. You're never going to set foot on the UK. You're going to be in a windswept area. But what happens to those barges? It worked. What happens to the barge? We'd be stuck there. Nobody knows. But Samara's right. It happened in Australia. I remember only because my brother married an Australian left winger, right? And they were all outraged. I remember the Australian government saying, we can't afford it. We're skidding. That's the way it's going to be. The Labour government that's now in Albanese, he kept that policy going, didn't he? That's the interesting thing, because it worked. You go, I'm sorry. I can't afford to pay for my own people. So I'm not giving it out free to anybody else. Let's not forget, Keir Starmer, when he was in opposition, was full of the joys of spring about how we have to welcome everybody to our shores, because we're all running away from war. It's not that long ago since that was Labour's policy. And they didn't want to stop the boats. They wanted to keep bringing them here. Anyway, let's move on to the NHS. Yes, so my nomination is the NHS, the organisation that loves to be part of the Be Kind Brigade and wear its lanyards, recognise 100 genders, and be lovely to all people, except if you are in a wheelchair, apparently, where you go to get weighed, and you're told to go to a pet shop instead, as if you were a prize-winning heifer and have to get treated like livestock. This is a poor woman in Shropshire who is wheelchair-bound. And because of her medication, they need to know how much she weighs. Previously, they would put on a scale, and you just subtract the weight of the wheelchair or on a hoist. That's all gone. So she was ping-ponged around various NHS clinics till they said, firstly, they said, go and contact some industrial factories, see if they can weigh you. And then, if that's not bad enough, go to a shop called Pet at Home and see if they can hoist you up like you're some prize-winning livestock. Unbelievably undignified. Yeah, I think we've got a little clip here for her. Here's she explaining the story. I can't believe this just happened. The NHS has just referred me to a pet shop. As a disabled person, medication, lots of lifting equipment, I'm often asked my accurate weight. OK, I need to get weighed because I can't stand a walk. This means I either need to have a hoist that's got weighing scales, or I need to be able to roll on onto a scale in my wheelchair and subtract the weight of the wheelchair. Moved to Shropshire about six months ago. Can't find anywhere in the NHS community to do this. I've just had this response. We advise patients to go to Pets at Home. Do I look like a chipmunk? That's extraordinary. Of all the stories that we've done about the NHS in the last year, you know, that really does take the biscuit. I mean, we've had... I didn't mean to say biscuits. We've had, you know, people waiting ambulances for hours on end because there's no room, people waiting nine hours for an ambulance. Keir Starmer this week, when he was asked what was his greatest achievement of being in office for nearly a year, you know, he said, he said, two million... We said we'd create two million more appointments in the NHS. We've actually created three million, which of course is a complete myth. They haven't created any appointments at all. They keep making appointments and then cancelling them and moving people from one waiting list to another. So it looks like the waiting lists are going down. But of course, not everybody sitting here will know someone who's waiting for something, right? I know somebody whose son has been waiting for some test results to come back. And from the NHS, from a scan, something to do with his girlfriend's kidney problems. And six months is what they're saying that the results are going to take. I know people who've got eye exams or eye opticians things going on. And they've had them cancelled three times in six months. Nobody's getting anything out of the NHS. And now they're telling people to go to pet shops. Crikey. It's had more money... Oh, sorry. Sorry, go on. No, it's had more money than it's ever had. It just does not make the mind boggles. They've just been giving away 30 billion. Howard, over to you. Emma Reynolds. Yes, I've never heard of her. I've never heard of her before. She's a treasury minister. I thought she was the business secretary. Transitioned. Yeah, well, I think... I think she's a junior treasury minister. I think she's a junior treasury minister or something like that. But anyway, she went on, you know, one of your competitions in terms of channels. That's twice you've done it now. I know, I know. It is a lefty broadcasting channel, as you know that. I know. There is one guy on it who I've got to respect. We've heard that. Nick Ferrari. I mean, he interviewed this. Yeah, he is great. Nick is a great guy. He's a petrol head. That's one reason I like him to do what I do. But she was asked about the Thames crossing. We all know where the Thames crossing goes, don't we? Yeah, she crossed the Thames. Yeah, crossed the Thames. Tilbury, right? Yeah. And she was asked, where does it start? Where does it finish? And that's how she went. She looked down, looked very forlorn. You know, for the sake of art, it goes from Grey's End to Tilbury. So people know that. Then she was asked, oh, by the way, how much is it going to cost? Oh, she said billions. Yeah, billions, which was also wrong, because it's the reason she was on the show, because she was announcing this £1 billion spend, which is going to go on bridges and tunnels and infrastructure generally around the country. But it turns out that at least half of it is going to go on the lower Thames crossing. So you'd think she would have known the answer to any question about the lower Thames crossing. But here she is. Just remind listeners where the new crossing is, where it takes off and where it lands. Well, you'll forgive me. I can't recall the exact landing zones. So the crossing that you're talking about, you don't know where it is? Well, it's... You don't actually know where it takes off from where it lands, do you? But we today are announcing £590 million towards that crossing. How much is the crossing going to cost, Secretary? Well, overall, it's going to cost several billion pounds. How many? You don't know that either, do you, actually? Well, it has already cost quite a lot of money. I don't want to be rude to you personally. Is there much point continuing this conversation? Because you don't know where a bridge starts, you don't know where it ends, and you don't know how much it costs. What should we do now? Oh, I know. Let's say we're going to give, I don't know, £500 million to HR... HR2? HR3? What is it? What's it called again? HRT? What is it? They don't know. They don't... They're not sure. I don't think the British public are falling for this inauthenticity, though. I think they can see right through them. And there are all these digitised automatons. Let's make another video. They haven't experienced life, any of these people, have they? None of them have. I think Diane Abbott sends a message of congratulations to Emma for her impressive grasp of detail on another great performance. Absolutely right. Funny you should mention Darren Jones, because he's in the next bit. Also, as well as, not HR2, but HS2, which is what it's actually called. This is Clank of the Week. Live from London, it's Clank of the Week with Mike Graham. Welcome back to Clank of the Week. This is, of course, the one place where you don't have to make any judgments because we do it all for you. And we've had four very good starts, I have to say. My one, my first nomination is HS2. Howard, you'll know a thing or two about HS2. They basically decided it was a great idea to build a fast train, which could take you from London to Manchester, could take you from London to Leeds. It was a sort of a Y-shaped, you know, beautiful thing. But unfortunately, they realised that they'd have to drive it through a load of bits of countryside, some of which had houses on. And so what they'd have to do then is buy all the houses up from people and pay them loads of money to tell them to move away. Buy loads of fields, you know, buy loads of bits of the countryside that previously didn't have any railways on them, build railway lines. But of course, it ran into a bit of trouble. The buffers were hit pretty straight away. And they've been talking about building this thing now since 2012. So we're now, what, 13 years on. We don't have any idea of when it's going to be finished. Labour have now announced that it's not going to be ready when they thought it was going to be ready, which was, I think, was it 3033 or something? It's in the 30s. 2033, yeah. Although it probably will be 3033. They've now said it's going to be delayed by two more years. The Tories wasted 37 billion on it, right, including stopping it from being built at one point because they found some bats in a tunnel. Do you remember that? They found some bats in a tunnel that they'd built. They'd built this tunnel. And the bats had nested in it. And so they thought, right, that's it. We can't, we have to sort of down tools, everybody. They now, and now it turns out that, and I got this, I actually did this story last year because somebody told me their son was working for a contractor who delivered bats, who delivered various, you know, works to contractors to the HS2 organisers. And he said, they basically think of a number, double it and then quadruple it and then put the invoice in. And it just gets paid because it's a government project. And nobody checks it. They're now looking into it for fraud. They now think that hundreds of millions of pounds of fraud have been perpetrated on the government. They're completely and utterly useless, right? But old Heidi Alexander, who's now the transport, the new transport secretary. Not the one with the red hair that nicks a mobile phone. No, not the convicted fraudster. No, that was, what's her name, Louise Hague, wasn't it? Nobody knows what happened to her. But they're basically now saying that all it's going to do, of course, is come in from Birmingham into London. But it's not going to go straight to Houston. No. It's going to go to a place called Old Oak Common. Which is not many miles away from Wormwood Scrubs in the west end, west of Shepherd's Bush, right? And it's going to be 20 minutes quicker than the regular train. That's it. That's all. 20 minutes. But you're going to have to take another train from Old Oak Common. Which takes 20 minutes. You think that's bizarre sort of alchemy? You can take exactly the same amount of time to get to Houston. And it's cost us 50 billion quid. Yeah. Somebody tell me a story once about... This should be Plank of the Week every week, really. This does sort of, on a serious note, sum up how crap we are now in this country. In Abu Dhabi, about 10 years ago, they were offered the opportunity, whatever you think of the Middle East, they were offered the opportunity to have the Formula One Grand Prix. And they gave them 1,000 days to build the Yass Formula One Marina. I don't know if you've been. Have you been there? I've not been to Abu Dhabi. It's so amazing. You stand in this glass. They completed this in 999 days. Yep. On cost. On budget. Done. Wembley took four years more than it should have. It was 10 times. We are rubbish at this, aren't we? I mean, that is the worst use of public money you could ever possibly... And this isn't Starbucks. This is a bloody tourist. £37 billion. Well, £37 billion is the overspend. The actual cost, I think, is more like 55 or 60 billion. And the point is, they were asked to do a cost-benefit analysis. They don't do things like that. It's like net zero. They don't do a cost-benefit analysis. I did. I spent a lot of money about what... If we spent the same amount of money that was being spent on HS2 actually on roads, what would it do to GDP? GDP growth, if we spent the same amount of money on roads, would be four times more than that. Amazing. Wow. And of course, to add insult to injury, it's only going to Birmingham now. It's not going to go to Manchester. It's not going to go to Leeds. So it's a lovely Y-shaped thing. It's just like that now. And I don't know how many people... It only goes to one place. Sorry. And of course, loads of people who had their houses bought up in... from anywhere in East Midlands Parkway, Sheffield, Leeds, Crewe, all the way up to Manchester. Has that been... Well, they now have to sell them back now because they don't need to build the railway track anymore. So they've bought all this property. Now they don't need it. You've been buying it back at half price. That's the point. That's what you've been doing. You know what's going to happen. You'd have some smart businessmen who'll go in and go, I'll buy all of that land back off you for half price, for half of what you paid for it. And the people who lose out, the people in the north of England, desperately need east-west transport things. And instead, we have a white elephant there. They voted Tories to get levelling up done. And what do they get? They get something going to Oak Common in Acton. Yeah, absolutely horrendous. And not many people actually want to go to Birmingham and stay there. So the endangerment of our old Oak Common. Well, the other thing is they're building this at a time when fewer and fewer people are using the railways because they're so useless. Well, that's why I wasn't here last week. Largely because... Yes, right. Largely because the people running them don't know what they're doing. I point this out every time, that the new, you know, under new management, nationalised railway system of Britain, South West Rail, the first train that they ran was actually a rail replacement bus service. You know, and you just think... Do you know what happened this morning? No. They're trying not to be delayed because of the heat. Oh, cool. Here we go. I don't care what anybody says. We are cracking the United Kingdom. Wrong kind of sun. Embarrassing. Let's not pretend we're First World anymore. Genuinely. No, I agree. I agree. Jeremy Carl, over to you. Darren Jones. Well, a bit like Miss Reynolds. Extraordinary. Do you remember years ago, I'm not sure which politician it was, was it Cameron, Johnson, May? Somebody was asked the price of a pint of milk. Yeah. I think it was. I have no idea. £5? I have to ask my man, Jim Johnson, he's a Chancellor. I sent my valet out for that. Darren Jones, who I've spoken to before, was jeered on Question Time. He sat there, the idiot, right? This is, again, what you're talking about. Like, you know, let's be honest. You'd be briefed. Your very worst thing. I bet I'm, you know, they're going to try me here. He said that most Channel migrants are children, babies and women. That's what he said. The entire audience started laughing and jeering at him when it was pointed out at the Home Office data shows. Home Office data, Darren Jones, you dick. 83% of arrivals in this country are men who throw away their passports and have no intention of doing anything other than commit crime and disappear into our society. And that's the number two of the Treasury. Sitting on a BBC, not that you want to, on a BBC programme going, they're all women and children. But my thing about this has always been the same. We've said this before about, if I was escaping a war-torn country, from a war-torn country, the very first thing I'd do is I'd take my wife and baby with me. I wouldn't leave them to be bombed once they went somewhere else. And also the first country I got to that didn't have bombs in me head, I'd stay there. Now let's come to Britain. We'll wipe your backside. Get yourself onto a dinghy. It's true, isn't it? We've got Darren Jones, who is? The majority of the people in these boats are children, babies and women who have been... You have got to take... No, look, I get this is... North of 90% of them are adult men. Let me be... No. Hang on, you're saying that's not true? No, no, I'm saying... Look, this is why it's controversial. No, I'm saying it's not true. Even the BBC audience is having a go. So that tells you something, doesn't it? And it's a biased one, not certainly going to be a biased one. It was up. You know, these are not people who actually, you know, are going to vote reform tomorrow. Are they? No, these are all... It is. No, well, they claim, of course, that it is a fair representation of the electorate in that particular constituency. What, men, women with penises? It never is. It's always loads of Labour apparatchiks, people who turn out to be Labour activists, trade union activists and all that. But even they can see that this guy's talking absolute common eros. And I don't know in those instances, when you look at that, does that man, does he believe what he's saying? He obviously thinks... Is he that detached from the truth that they've just spun in their heads that this is the truth? I mean, you get that impression that you could argue all day. Z, you should have said, 83%, mate, home office data. There you are. That was your own government department. But they don't read the facts, Jeremy, because, I mean, he works with Emma Reynolds and she doesn't have access to that. She doesn't even know who he is. Right. It's not gone very well, has it? Genuinely, they just sit around in committee rooms and in sort of, you know, Downing Street meeting rooms and they talk as if they know what they're talking about and they all agree with whatever it is that the last guy said because they don't want to be the one that stands out. And they actually think that that's what's going on. But this stuff is so basic. You know, the rape gangs, the migrants. You know, anybody who's got five minutes on Google can find out the evidence. And how on earth can you get to that sort of status in government, not being aware? Which tells you to stay at another level. And we should stop calling them asylum seekers. These are economic migrants, for the point you made. Ukrainians coming over here. Women, children, the infirmly elderly. These are scouts. These are scouts sent by their family to get a foothold here and bring their families over. We must stop calling them asylum seekers. It's worth mentioning that the BBC actually edited that bit out. So they did, yes. The clip on X. Yeah, they did. And I was actually talking. I called up the BBC about it. And I had a bit of an argument with one of their press officers. And they were like, yes, but we're still putting the point across. It's like, no, you edited the lie out. Are you OK? Like, I mean, this is not unbiased reporting, as you claim. So it's just that everyone is part of this narrative that they try and spin. And it's actually really dangerous language that he's pushing out to the viewers. Because he's trying to appeal to their emotions with straight up lies. Yeah, exactly right. I mean, we've seen pictures, I think, all this week of more and more people coming. Because as you said, the number is now over 40,000 since 20,200 it hit just this week. Because something like 2,000 people have come in the last week alone. Is that since Dahmer became prime minister? That's since Dahmer became prime minister, right? I think it's something like 17,000 or 18,000 this year alone. I predict that it will go up over the course of the summer to at least 60,000. There'll be another 20 will come. Because there's no reason for them not to come. And you look at all of the pictures that come in from the channel, and the people getting onto the dinghies, and the people arriving in Dover. And you have to look very hard to find a woman or a child. And the suspicion, if you do find a child, is that they've actually brought a child with them, just because it will help them. Well, they're actually 17. Well, no, but they're holding a child in their arms, hoping that that will help them when they get to the other side. And how many has Trump got rid of? He's got rid of all of them. Exactly. So why can't we do it? Belgium have done it. Don't let them take off from the shores of Belgium. They stop them. To be fair, the French have got a longer kind of coastline. They can still go, though. They refuse to go into the water. Nigel Farage said to me this week, he said it's our fault that this is happening. It's not the French's fault. We can't keep blaming them. Because if people were trying to leave this country in dinghies to go to France, we'd be like, off you go. Thanks very much. Get lost. We don't want them. They don't want them. Why should they keep them? Yeah, but we are paying them 500 million quid. That's my gripe. Well, that's our mistake as well. That's our fault. Yeah, you're right. Nobody came up to you and said, here's 500 million quid. Would you mind doing something? To do, bank of the week. Yeah, and you just go, oh, I'll take the money. And then you don't do it. Nobody does anything about it. You just go, fine, you know. Sick part about Darren Jones, though, is actually, well, he's encouraging, actually, women and children and people to appreciate this narrative, that they should pay people traffickers and get traffic to cross. That's what he's actually pushing when you hear him say this. Exactly right. He's encouraging it all. Absolutely. Over to you, Samara, with the Royal Opera House. Very highbrow. Yes, the London's Royal Opera House. Well, it's very highbrow, and it's very woke. Those things always go hand in hand these days. I mean, they have basically issued a trigger warning for Romeo and Juliet. Yeah, cool, Samara. I think you'll have a few words to say about that, Rafe, because I know this is really your jam. But the trigger warning is for violence and death. Wow. Yeah. Don't switch on the news, then, because that's all you're going to see these days. I mean, I just don't understand when. You're right. I mean, I wonder when they're going to do, they're going to stop putting trigger warnings on the news. Yeah, they probably will. They'll be like, wait, don't watch this. Don't watch this. I mean, you wouldn't even be able to watch a second of it these days. I don't know why we're mollycoddling people, and why we're actually scrubbing a lot of what we've been, you know, taught to appreciate in the arts. It's really, really silly stuff. I mean, it's not like there's four-year-olds going to see this. And even if there are, it's classic themes. Yeah. I mean, it's literary text. We shouldn't be censoring this. It's very, very dystopian. And I don't know where we'll stop if we're trying to censor or trigger warn for violence and death. That's life. Yeah. I was very amused to see, because if you read the play, Juliet is 13, and Romeo's about 16, 17. There was no underage trigger warning there. Where's it based, Rotherham? Jesus. Romeo and Juliet in Rotherham, brilliant. You're all right. There's a wonderful website called booktriggerwarnings.com, where you put in any book, and it gives you the trigger warnings. And I put in the Bible, and there were 16 trigger warnings. Incest, rape, polygamy, violence, war. Sounds great. Giving birth in a stable. How do you think that's... I mean, honestly. Well, let's see what the Koran has. I put in the Koran, zero. No trigger warnings. What's that website? Just get a free gun. Booktriggerwarnings.com. You can all search at home and have a look. Yeah, that is extraordinary, isn't it? And certainly, Shakespeare gets a fair few, doesn't he, on almost every single Shakespeare play that's ever been written. You might put Bank of the Week in trigger warnings. What would happen to the whole show? Good idea. Was it not the Globe Theatre, which is a million miles from here, did they not have a trigger warning on Romeo and Juliet? Yes, four years ago. Even better, they gave the Samaritans' phone number out. At least you didn't have to phone them when you were leaving. I mean, that's the sort of... Amazing. Well, here we've got a clip here, but this is not Romeo and Juliet as Royal Opera House version goes. This is a different version, which is a reboot, apparently. It's a woke reboot, where Juliet has apparently left Romeo, so she's no longer going, wherefore art thou, Romeo? She's gone, get lost, Romeo. I'm off for an independent woman's life. Check it out. Oh, happy dagger. I'm sorry, but I'm still really young. I've had literally one boyfriend, and I've got my whole life ahead of me. I'm actually thinking about travelling. This has been really fun. This is still my play. Well, it's not my ending. This is my beginning. So, of course, Romeo gets written out, right? She goes off and has fun around the world with all of her LGBT plus QI whatever friends. What a romantic story. What a lovely story, yeah. I don't know what they get up to once they get to the bedroom. That's not for me to say. It's a bit of a strange twist, isn't it? What's going on? Just what is it all about? I really do worry that I'm turning into my father live on television, because it's almost as if every pig in thing that I know to be, I don't know, Shakespeare, for God's sake, we just studied it. Everything's going to be picked to shreds. They're going to find something wrong in everything. I have this argument with my daughter. He knows this all the time. Glad you've got opinions, but don't. I am never going to change the fact that what your grandparents taught me, I believe in. I'm not trashing that. You can do one. Well, it's going to be all our children's story. Hansel and Gretel, pretty brutal, you know? Or Hans Christian Andersen, or the Brothers Grimm. Well, Disney cartoons already got trigger warnings. Yeah. They've already got them on several places. You just watch out for Sky. I know. Coming back, we're going to be doing Howard's favourite personal choice once again, Bank of the Week. And of course, Rafe, you've got a head teacher. It's all coming up on Bank of the Week. Live from London, it's Plank of the Week with Mike Graham. Welcome back to Plank of the Week. We are very nearly at the final furlong. I've got one more to go. We've got two more to come. Rafe, first of all to you, a head teacher. Yes, this is a story, a sad story, about a school, primary school in Scotland, where the children, for the end of year, put on a lovely event. The parents and pupils brought in two Union flags, and there was a lovely montage of Union Jacks. A lovely, heartwarming, endearing sort of scene, you would have thought. Well, not if you're the headmistress, Dr Fiona MacDonald of this school, who issued a letter stating that there are alarm and distress had been caused by the sight of these Union flags. Flying it was offensive and not in keeping with the values of respect of the school, you know? I mean, for heavens, what a sad state of affairs when flying the flag. That's not offensive. Not flying the flag is offensive, actually. The flag that people fought and died for our freedoms. And of course, you also know, of course, there's nothing more inclusive than the Union flag, which represents every single person. Had you had the soul tyre, though, there would have been no issue at all. No, of course. Because when you wave the Welsh flag, when you wave the Scottish flag, it's progressive nationalism. When you wave the Union flag or the Cross of St George, it's racist. And the same people who complain about all of the sectarianism and division that they claim it causes are the same ones with the Palestinian emoji, the Ukrainian emoji, the BLM fist. Well, the trouble is, in parts of Scotland, you know, because I remember when Alex Salmond was in charge, actually, when he was first minister, and I'll just say, tip my hat to the man, because he was a great friend of ours and a fantastic plank of the week contender as well. Great man. He was here quite a lot. He tried to introduce a kind of a ban on sectarian images and things at football matches, you know, between Rangers and Celtic. But they realised they couldn't do it, because as far as Rangers fans are concerned, the Irish flag, a tricolour, is offensive. But as far as the Celtic fans are concerned, the Union flag is also offensive. So you can't arrest people for carrying around a flag of their own country. It's absolutely ridiculous. They're all mad up there, aren't they? Well, you said it very well. I can say it. And it's the worst in Scotland, you know, because we have our own woke loonies down here. But you've had, you know, decades of the SNP forcing anti-British identity, a war on our identity, essentially, there. So up there, anything that's British now is basically verboten. Howard, over to you. Sadiq Khan. Amazing, amazing. Why do you always give me Sadiq? Yeah, this is interesting. We had this magic money tree, didn't we, from Rachel Reeves this week, the spending review. Oh, yeah. And she was chucking money around all over the place, so I can't believe it. Now, this 22 billion black hole they keep talking about is about a small percentage of what she's spending. Yeah. It's unbelievable. And she's spending an extra 2.3% on the police, plus on top of inflation. All the police across the country are getting an extra two billion pounds. But guess who complained? You never guess, will you? No. Sadiq Khan. Sorry, Sir Sadiq. I don't call him Sir. No, thank you. We don't call him that, Mike, in the week. He doesn't get that moniker. No, no. We've got other names for him. But he's complaining that he thinks there's not enough police being recruited with the money that she's put out there. People will not be safe on the streets. Oh, really? Excuse me? Yeah. Have you noticed how long you've been in, you know, how crime has gone up? Yeah. Machetes are everywhere. You name it. He is responsible for the problems of London, not only the economic downfall of London, but also the safety, you know, all that sort of thing. And I'll tell you what. If he'd looked at his own particular budget, which is already $18 billion in the red. Yeah. $18 billion. $18 billion in the red. And I'm sorry I didn't win, guys, but you could have had me, and we wouldn't be talking about this. Exactly. But the thing is, what he's saying is that there's not enough money being spent by central government. But Rachel Reeves basically told him to F off. Yeah. You're not having any more money. Right. Well, I wish you'd do that to Ed Miliband. Well, that's the next stage, isn't it? Yeah. He wasn't on this week. This is quite shocking. He hasn't been. No, he's been lying low. Steady, Eddie. He's been lying a bit low. He's toast, anyway. He's got a chunk of money, though, and so he's lying low trying to spend it. That's what he's doing. That chunk of money is $80 billion, Jeremy. Yeah. It's got some front, though, Khan, hasn't it? I mean, you made the point. You know, London is the knife capital of, many people would say, the Western world. Probably. You walk up and down on the Tube, there's, you know, Employer of the Week who's, you know, got one arm, all of that. But knives deal with crime. It's not about getting extra money. It's about spending, like you said about the NHS, spending your money more effectively. Tomorrow was mugged when you were away. Yeah, I was, actually. And I spoke to the policewoman who dropped me home because I had no other way of getting home. And, well, she said that we are, the issue is not that they don't have enough resources, because I actually came pretty quickly. But they said that it's soft touch. Even if we found this guy, we couldn't lock him up or anything. And she said there's stabbings going on all over the place. She just said London's a nightmare. So what happened? Did you have stuff stolen? Yeah, I had my phone swiped. Kevin still made her work that night. Yeah, I know. She still had to work that night. Kev still made you work. You know who never deals with the crime, though? Sadiq, who he goes around in a bloody motorcade with armed guards. But just quickly, just attention, 1,100 pit staff all earn £100,000. There you are, Sadiq. That's where you can get some bloody savings. He's got about 40 or 50 staff on his own PR machines, hasn't he? And just for good measure for motorists out there in the city, apparently there's not enough bikes in London. So Sadiq can't assign yet another contract, this time with Bolt, who are an Estonian-based company, and they're going to be bringing their electric bikes into London. So there's already 50,000 bikes here already. They're going to probably bring about another 10,000 or 12,000. So it'll be 60,000-odd bikes roaming the streets with these characters on them who don't bother wearing helmets. You don't stop at red lights. You don't care if they hit your car. They just nobody gives a damn. It's amazing. Starmer and Khan have got to go. Yeah, absolutely right. That would be great, wouldn't it? What a happy Christmas present that would be. Starmer and Khan out the door. Coming up, my final pick is going to be something to do with our national broadcaster, believe it or not. This is Plank of the Week. Welcome back to Plank of the Week. We have reached the final furlong, and we've only got one more suggestion for you, and I'm afraid it's the BBC, because you can't really go to too long without knowing the BBC. I've missed Sadiq Khan of the BBC. I know. And, you know, there are several reasons why you could do the BBC, because Glastonbury's coming up very shortly, and they'll be sending the usual small army of people. Unwashed vegetarians. Hundreds and hundreds of people. The entire offices of West London's BBC broadcasting house just shuffle off down to the glamping sites of Somerset. But no, this is a great Sun exclusive this week, actually. This is why. And it was all about BBC Breakfast, which I think has been overtaken for the first time by its ITV rival. Bullying probe at BBC Breakfast. Clemmie Moody wrote this story. Absolutely tremendous. And, of course, it involves two people who are the main presenters, Naga Manchetti and Charlie State. Now, from the story that's been written, Naga Manchetti comes out of it rather well, because actually she's said to be very, you know, cooperative. She stays behind after the show. She talks to the young journalists. She tries to kind of, you know, encourage them in their careers, and she's very, very nice about it. Charlie State, on the other hand, apparently just leaves straight away. I don't know if you know any of these people. I've waited years for this moment. Have you? Yeah. You may be able to tell me a story about these particular individuals. She, who is married to a friend of mine, is a thoroughly professional, lovely. She gets bad press unfairly. She's a hard worker. She's down to earth. She's decent. She's honest. She's one of the few people at the BBC I play golf with. She's a proper top girl. He, I'll probably be sued, is everything I despise about the BBC, up his own backside. Yeah, you've had dealings with him. Oh, my God. I used to look down his nose. I mean, honestly, but she proper. I'd buy that from Clem as well. I'd buy that. Nana would look after, talk to staff. Him, no. Old school BBC, too good for all that. Is there anything you can tell us about him that's broadcastable? Oh, hello. You want that story, don't you? I do. I don't know how I'm going to do this. All right, you don't have to. No, I'll do it. There was a very raucous edition of the Jeremy Cowell show once in which a woman accused her husband of sleeping with her daughter, who was his stepdaughter, and she was quite vociferous. You slept with my bloody daughter! So everybody calmed down, and she was taken to the front of the then studios in Manchester. She was just calming down, and everybody was doing their thing. And then somebody, some young junior, decided to bring him for cigarettes around the same corner. And just as 50 yards were separated, then we calmed the whole thing. She saw him, and she went, you dirty, useless! And at that exact moment, Charlie Stake came out of the BBC, and he walked to me, and he just went. So he can go do one. Yeah, that sounds about right. I think he's right up his own back. The real villain of the piece, in addition to it being him, is some bloke called Richard Frediani, who's the editor. Now, I don't know this guy. I don't know whether you do. But apparently, he runs the place with a rod of steel. They feel that he thinks he's untouchable, because the show won a BAFTA, I think, last month. So did TOWIE six years ago. Can I point that out? Seriously. Apparently, staff are now frightened to be left alone with him. You know, a bit like... No. Anyway, apparently, one allegation is that he physically shook a lower-ranking female editor by the shoulders, and tried to tell her that she was messing up her job. And the word is that both Naga and Charlie Stake have basically stopped communicating with this guy, because he's so horrible. And he's now trying to push a couple of the other presenters over them. So it's all gone horribly wrong. And once again, the BBC have clearly no idea what they're doing. I don't watch it, because obviously, I'm on at the same time. But you know, one of their flagship shows is in complete crisis. Nobody wants to work on it. The presenters don't speak to each other, right? And nobody talks to the guy who's editing it. Apart from that, it's all going really, really well. They're very good at passing judgment, aren't they? On a serious note, the BBC are very good at passing judgment. Yeah, I'm higher than Val. And any other commercial, whatever. That was my story about Charlie Stake. Listen, he can lick down his nose, that's fine. But it's interesting when the tides turn. Oh, yeah. And the cameras turn on people like that. Now, we've got a little clip for you. And this is not from BBC Breakfast. This is what BBC would actually be like if they told the truth. And who would you say is your favourite political party at the moment? None of them. They're all f***ed. Every single last one of them. What do you think of the National Health Service at the moment? It's a f***ing joke. I'm ill four times a year. And I've got more chance of getting sh** than I have getting an appointment. Firstly, what do you think of the immigration situation right now? It's a f***ing joke. We can't look after our own people, yet those f***ers are flying through the borders. And what do you make of the British weather these days? F***ing a** always happening. Cold, wet, miserable. It's like living in a damp sock. I've seen sunnier funerals. If only that was what they would actually... Are we playing that? Yeah, but they're going to have to bleep it. Why bleep it? You know when you bleep... It's just like, everybody knows. Brilliant. If the BBC actually did properly go out and interview people outside of Notting Hill and Kensington, and, you know, Baker Street, they might find that's what people actually think. So, anyway, here we are, we're right at the end. Oh, God, that's made me cry. Apparently, that was great. Now, I have to choose the winner. I don't know. I mean, I think it's sort of got to be Keir Starmer again, hasn't it? I mean, I know that we get Keir Starmer awards very, very often for playing... Doesn't Khan win occasionally? Khan does win occasionally, but I don't think he's... I mean, this week, Starmer has done the U-turn of all U-turns. This one, it was only six months ago when he was saying, you know... You're all far right. You're all far right, jumping on a bandwagon. We don't need a national inquiry into grooming gangs and rape gangs because we've already had one. Well, now, apparently, we do. So, Plank of the Week, once again, Sir Keir Starmer, the worst Prime Minister, the most unpopular Prime Minister this country has ever seen. Now you're Plank of the Week again. Thank you very much to Jeremy, thanks to Samara, Rafe, thank you very much, Howard Cox. We'll see you all same time next week for more Plankery.