Episode 7 No Such Thing as the News

A Glasgow man has been jailed for attempted robbery after he ran

into a shop waving a sword and was chased out by a woman armed

Danish firefighters have used a battering ram to break

into a house and rescue a man who had become trapped

A woman in Houston, Texas with 26-inch-long fingernails

has said she hopes to break the world record.

It currently stands at 28 feet four-and-a-half inches.

And the deputy leader of South Lanarkshire Council,

who oversaw the closure of all the public toilets

in the area, has been fined for urinating in the street.

Hello! And welcome to another episode of No Such Thing As The

News, coming you from up the creek in Greenwich, London.

Once again, we are here to present to you the most interesting stories

we found in the news of the last seven days. In no particular order,

here we go, starting with you, Andrew Hunter Murray. My charge is

that before he was Chancellor of the Exchequer, Philip Hammond was a used

car salesman. Immediately before he was Chancellor... , not immediately

before, it was some years before he became the second most important

politician in the country. After Nigel Farage. So, he had a nod of

business scheme as a young man. He was really entrepreneurial and he

set up loads of companies, and one of them was buying and selling Ford

cars from Dagenham, which I think makes him a used car salesman. He

ran discos for teenagers, he tried... That's pretty cool! That

was when he was a teenager, wasn't it one he was a Goth, wasn't he?

According to Richard Madeley. He went to school with Richard Madeley,

and somebody asked Richard what he was like and he said, was a Goth. He

wore a long trench coat. The Times researched, said, in fact, Mr

Hammond left Sheffield technical high school seven years before the

popularity of the Goth look. So he was a trendsetter? So, Philip

Hammond is in the news this week because of the Autumn Statement,

which is kind of like a budget like. Like the mini me, the Dr evil of the

budget! Exactly. We have got some pictures in from the Treasury to so

how amazingly dynamic that is, what they're doing there at the moment.

This is Philip Hammond, there he is...

I would say that these pictures appear to me to be pictures of a cup

with an incidental Chancellor in the background. There was an article

about him in the Financial Times soon after he became Chancellor, and

they said he has such a sobering public image that he is often

recurred to as an accountant, despite having no accounting

qualification. Which is tough! A colleague of his allegedly Wunsch

suggested going for a drink, and he just replied, why? So, the idea that

he was a used car salesman, I suddenly thought, a lot of these MPs

must have had jobs prior to being an MP. Amber Rudd, for example, worked

on Four Weddings And A Funeral, the movie. She was credited as

aristocracy coordinator. How far she has come! The only other person I

could see who had a genuine movie credit was George Osborne, and he

has a thank you credit in the Star Wars movie Perforce Awakens for

inspiring the evil! I think he provided a kind of tax to

international film-makers, and, Disney and Lucas films were like,

thanks, buddy! And they filmed it over here as a result. The Autumn

Statement is like the micro-budget, basically, and I don't know if he

can do this in the Autumn Statement, but during the budget, there's one

thing he can do, which is an alcohol. Your allowed to do it for

some reason, because he has to talk for ages, basically. Most of them

drink mineral water. Boring. The Liskeard had whiskey, and if you go

a bit further back, Benjamin Disraeli had brandy. And Gladstone

had this weird bottle and people said, what is in the bottle? It

turned out it was Sherry and beaten egg. But he did 12 budgets. Yes, but

what were they like?! The longest ever uninterrupted budget speech was

William Gladstone, at four hours 45 minutes, uninterrupted. And they're

not scintillating at the best of times! , if we leave the year we

will be able to drink champagne in pants again. Like you ever stop to!

That I have been having to do it on the slide! -- you ever stopped! They

announced they are going to bring that back as soon as they are

allowed to. It was Churchill's favourite and Queen Victoria's as

well, I think. Churchill said, half a bottle is insufficient to tease my

brains but an imperial pint is an ideal size for a man like me. It is

enough for two at lunch and one at dinner. So obviously, the Autumn

Statement has been delivered and we now know that the internet broadband

speed is going to be put right up, and they're can spend ?1 billion on

gold standard broadband. There is a place which has the lowest in the

country, and it's insane. They have a top speed of 1.3 megabits per

second. And to put that into context... No, don't, we all know

what that means! If you're at base camp in Mount Everest, you can get 2

megabits per second. Well, you are a lot higher up! On the moon, you can

get 20 megabits per second. What?! And someone tried to download a

James Bond movie and it took five days. You know what that means? It

means that if you wanted to get it quicker, in theory, you could take a

plane to Kaz extends, and flight to the moon, which takes three days,

land and download that Bond movie faster than you could have done in

this place. In theory. That's missing out like years of training

to be an astronaut. So, Hammond has got in a bit of trouble with his

fellow cabinet members for being slightly negative about Brexit,

would you say? What did he say? He said... We're all going to die! Flee

to our second homes in Monaco, fellow Tories!

I think he said there was going to be a ?100 billion hole in the

budget. And I thought I would look at some of the other things which

have been affected by Brexit. Problems with Marmite. And another

bit of Marmite news this week is that Marmite's chief taster has

retired. Revealing, he actually hated it! He has been doing the job

for 42 years and he says he has sampled the equivalent of 206 to 4

billion jars of Marmite. He says, having retired, even though he will

not eat it every day, he will still eat it when he feels like it which

is quite often. It is time for factor number two. And that is...

It's time to move on to our second fact of the show. And it is. My fact

this week is that Oxford Dictionaries' word of the year is

actually two words, post-truth. Only seven out of their 13 Words of the

Year have in fact been one word. Is in the dictionary is lying to us!

So, this is the news this week. The word of the year is post-truth, a

reference to the fact that truth does not exist any more choice so,

they have had a Word of the Year going since 2004. Since then it has

been a big society, squeezed middle... The first one was carbon

foot went, they have also had credit crunch, then they had, simples,

omnishambles, selfie and last year, it was emoji, which you might

remember. Which we could not actually afford to get a picture of.

I wish I could tell you how I feel about that! I guess they're just

trying to represent what the mood of the country is. The word of this

year is Brexit. They say it was first recorded in 2013, and has

increased by more than 3400% this year. Which is the inflation rate

next year! They said that it is even more useful as a word down Watergate

because of all the different types of new words like Bremain, Bremorce

and others. Do you know when is the first use of the word post-truth?

So, it came in a US presidential scandal. It was the Iran

ultra-scandal, where Ronald Reagan denied that the US was trading guns

for hostages -- Contra scandal -- and even though the American people

knew he was lying, they did not really care because the outcome was

more important than the truth. There was a study done in June by Columbia

university at the French national Institute about the way that fake

news spreads online choice they found out that 59% of links which

people share on social media have never been clicked on. So people are

more willing to share an article than they are to read the article

before they share it choice so, stop it. Other newspapers are now having

to deny that certain newspapers exist. So, the Denver Post in the

last couple of weeks had to write an article the headline of which was,

the Denver Guardian is not a newspaper, these stop believing it.

It was the one which had the story that an FBI agent suspected in the

Hillary e-mail leaks have been found dead in his apartment. Lots of

people shared it, and it was not true. In Baltimore they have had to

say that the Baltimore Gazette has not existed since the 1860s. Please

stop reading it! Because all the articles are way out of date! They

did this big expose on a couple of weeks ago, and they found out that

the top 20 fake news stories in the three months after the election had

8.7 million shares or or whatever it is called. And the top 20 real news

stories had only had 7.4 million, so fake news stories were getting more

shares than real news stories. A lot of people are spreading them but

doing it not in a manipulative way, they just think it is genuinely

news. The New York Times did a story on a guy called Mr Tettey. He sent

out this... -- Mr Clarke. And so you took this photo and use all of these

buses. It turned out that he was walking by and he saw these buses,

and he thought, this was where the protests are, I wonder if this was

to do with the protests. He said he did a quick Google and he said he

could not find that there were any conferences in the area. There was,

there was one with 13,000 people, a software conference, in the area,

and that is what the buses were for. This guy just sent it out and it

went viral and got picked up by major news outlets. He was really

apologetic because he did not know. He knew that there might be another

explanation but he said, I'm also a very busy businessman and I do not

have time to fact check everything I put out! We need to move on.

Anything first? What you were saying about dictionaries reflecting

changing times - in Australia, the Australian national dictionary, they

added a raft of new words in August. And they were quite relevant,

because there were for example aborigine words which had not been

in there before, and also, the terms. So, they added, happy as a

bastard on Father's Day. And also, my personal favourite, dry as a dead

dingo's donger! Have way through the shore, time to

look at the stories you have sent to us through e-mail and social media.

This came from Joshua on Twitter, Australian police investigating a

break-in at a community hall dusted for fingerprints but found only a

bomb print on the glass door. Could have had to huge fingers? James?

Mine is from Angelina. And that was sent to your direct

account wasn't it? Apparently only 100 cases have been documented since

1973. I am now a medical curiosity. And Andy? This was sent in from JC.

OK, time to move on to fact a number three, that is James. My fact that

this week a satellite was launched which carries the most advanced

weather predicting system in history. It should have gone up

three weeks ago but was delayed due to unforeseen weather conditions.

LAUGHTER This is incredible, it's something

called the due stationary environmental satellite and it will

make weather forecasting better overnight. Literally. The way it

scans things is ten times better, it can scan have the Earth every 15

minutes, in severe weather it will be able to go in and scan it every

30 seconds which we cannot do at the moment. It will give us real-time

weather and might save lives because we'll be able to give people more

time when there are tornadoes are hurricanes are anything like that.

One of the most incredible science stories. I had the comparison, if

the current system is like watching a black and white movie with no

sound, this is a Blu-ray DVD. That mean it will be supplanted by

superior technology in about six months? When is the Netflix

satellite coming? The first thing which got me excited about this was

the fact it's going to be able to steer planes away from turbulence so

it is able to measure the waves within clouds, it beams images

through clouds and sees what weeds are inside them and can tell planes

to avoid turbulence which is great news. The weather event which

stopped the original satellite growing up was Hurricane Matthew and

we have a picture of it. Look at that! That is a picture of Hurricane

Matthew. If we can take pictures like that I am not sure we need

their satellite. There was footage and package this week of the clean

room which is what they call the completely pristine environment they

have to keep the satellite and before it goes up. Some of the

instruments are so sensitive that the contamination limit, even after

15 years orbiting, there cannot be a single layer of molecules on the

surface of the instruments otherwise they will not work. That is how

cleanly had to keep it. But when it goes up want stuff get on it? I

think they keep it off it as it goes up. I hope they have bought it

through. Turns out they just wrapped it to the rocket and it has

disintegrated! One embarrassing thing which could happen to all

satellite is the case law affect which is when two bits of detritus

in space collide and break into little pieces and those pieces crash

into other things and it's like a chain reaction, we are in danger of

that. China tested and anti-satellite device in 2007 to

check it worked and eight told us only after they had sent it up. It

broke up into hundreds of thousands of little pieces which are still

rotating around the Earth and we had to track all of them. There are all

sorts of bits of detritus around the world spinning around and they could

crash into one another. If they do it could block out space from

everyone. You are not allowed to do in space and that is one of the

reasons why -- you not allowed to to in space. They are up there for

weeks! They just take Imodium. I have got a video... Video created by

the US Naval research laboratory and it's the cloud of debris

disintegrating satellites. This is the area which could be contaminated

by debris. It goes, a few more rotations and then we cut to about

later, yeah. I know. It looks really nice doesn't it? We need to move on

soon. Can I just show you, this fact about the weather initially, and

there has been a lot of flooding this week so I was looking at how we

can stop flood damage and we have a video of this amazing product, I UK

company called tarmac created top mix which is permeable concrete.

Where is the water going? What is happening to it? It just sucks up

the water. It is able to drink a thousand litres of water per square

metre in one minute. If we use that then all the water disappears into

the tarmac and we are all fine. It has drawbacks, it is a bit weaker.

If you drop your drink... Do you normally skip it back up? You should

see me in a car park! OK, time to move on to the final fact, which is

mine. As part of the Buckingham Palace refurbishment, the Queen will

start using her leftover food to power boilers. Does that mean she

has to choose between being too cold or too hungry? This is the fact that

this week they have decided they will renovate Buckingham Palace is

that right? Yeah, it will cost three and ?69 million. Builders these

days! And that will only be the court! 78 bathrooms, 5000 light

fittings, 330 fuse boxes, 20 miles of skirting board, 20 miles of

heating pipework, there is a lot to do. 20 miles would take you all the

way to Windsor Castle, skirting board all the way to Windsor Castle.

The fact the Queen is managing to heed her house with her leftover

food, this is an anaerobic digestible unit which is in the

plans for the Buckingham Palace refurbishment, it said they will

build that unit and what it does is it breaks down organic matter so

food in this case but it can be sewage and things like that but I

could not for the life of me find any evidence they were going to use

the Queen 's sewage to power the house. The Queen doesn't make any

sewage! It's a reaction which happens without oxygen and produces

a biogas which is 60% methane and 40% carbon dioxide which can be

burned and it heats the house, the boiler. The staff who work there are

also live they are so, it has a cashpoint, it has a post office and

a cinema, a helipad and the other thing it has is a store of soda

water and blotting paper for when the cordless p on the floor. I have

read a couple of accounts which say they have the run of the place --

when the corgi's P on the floor. It is in dire need of repair, it is

always hot, the radiators don't operate individually and most of the

knobs have broken so there are rooms and Buckingham Palace which are

never entered but are always very hot. It's also not very efficient,

it topped the list a few years ago of the most environmentally damaging

building in London. They said it was the least energy-efficient home in

the whole of the UK. I have a thermal image, that is how much is

escaping. You can see the super hot rooms on the left-hand side. This

group said that effectively for London its central heating radiator

it gives off that much heat. She has to switch bedrooms for the move,

this is a compromise essentially, it could have been that the whole Royal

family moved out and they did their refurbishment and a shorter out of

time or they did not move them and they took longer and they have gone

for the latter but the Queen has to move out of her bedroom which I

would be kicking up a Royal fuss about. Another building which is

quite energy inefficient is Trump Tower. Trump Tower has an energy use

intensity score of 216. Any score over 206 places the building in the

90th percentile of the worst pollution emitters of any multi

family residential building. Good thing global warming isn't real!

There is a lot of talk about Donald Trump having to visit the Queen at

some point, will she extend an invitation, Trump's mother was a big

fan of the Queen. Great Queen. Great Queen. The best Queen. His mother

really like the Queen and so I was looking into, or Balmer visited the

Queen and apparently the detail the Queen goes into making sure they

have an amazing trip, President Obama and Michelle Obama apparently

reported that when they got there even the detail of the toilet paper

they for a fair in terms of thickness and colour and texture.

Where is that written down? Going through his speeches? Can we go back

to that picture? Are they at a key party, are they about to go home

with each other's spouse? LAUGHTER Prince Philip looks very happy about

it! I hope you like open windows! We need to wrap up in a second. One

thing, there is another building which will be renovated which is the

houses of parliament and the repairs will be billions of pounds because

it's enormous so there have been loads of proposals. Some people have

suggested this massive floating bubble on the surface of the

Thames... Instead of the Houses of Parliament? It's a temporary thing,

once it is finished you can it and it floats away to other democracies.

If you look at the picture, the Tower of Big Ben, at the other end

is the Victoria Tower. I did not know what was in there but they have

every act of Parliament and it's all written on calfskin because it keeps

for hundreds of years. The longest scrawl is from 1721 and it attacks

act and it is longer than the Houses of Parliament itself. -- it is a tax

act. On this refurbishment they have decided now where MPs are going to

live and sadly it's not in a futuristic bubble. They are going to

have to move to the Department of Health which is Richmond house and

Richmond house is least in an Islamic bond scheme, that is one of

the details of how the party is leased and because it is an Islamic

bond scheme anything which happens their forbids the sale of alcohol so

all MPs for six years will be living in a place that forbids the sale of

alcohol. They currently live in a place which has ten bars. When they

realise this might be the case the proposed that they nationalise the

red Lion pub which they all go to. They said make sure it is ours and

the red Lion pub 's owners, Fullers, have said no, sorry. OK, that is all

of artefacts, just time to share some of the stories we didn't have

time to get to, starting with you James. Mine is that this week the

favourite to become next president of France announced he not Hillary

Clinton. His lead in the polls subsequently plummeted and he ended

up coming second. Andy? This is that people in an online charity auction

have bid up to ?500 for a signed pair of Jeremy Corbyn's old shoes.

There is a left one and then a far left one! APPLAUSE

OK, that visit, that is all from us, we will be back next week, this has

No Such Thing As The News, goodbye. "Woman 'Entered By a Horse Spirit'

Gallops on All Fours Who knows where

it's going to take me? Maybe I'm related

to a few criminals. Wow!