A lot has happened in 2022.
In this episode, we look at some of the most unusual British news stories of the year, including footballer's wives, the crime of treason, and the shifting demographics of the United Kingdom.
[00:00:00] Hello, hello hello, and welcome to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:00:12] The show where you can listen to fascinating stories, and learn weird and wonderful things about the world at the same time as improving your English.
[00:00:21] I'm Alastair Budge, and this is going to be the last episode of 2022, so today we are going to be talking about some unusual news stories from the year, stories that, even if you live in the UK or you follow British news closely, you might not have been aware of.
[00:00:38] On our little journey we’ll come across footballer’s wives, misbehaving politicians, the changing demographics of the country, a mad man with a crossbow and the crime of high treason.
[00:00:50] OK then, The Unusual British News of 2022.
[00:00:57] It might sound like an understatement to say that a lot has happened in the UK since the first of January of 2022.
[00:01:06] The country, as of the time of recording, has had three different prime ministers, experienced the hottest day on record, and the British pound dipped to an all-time low against the dollar.
[00:01:19] But perhaps the biggest national change is one you will no doubt be aware of.
[00:01:25] The country lost a queen in Elizabeth II, and got a new king, Charles the III.
[00:01:31] So, our first category of unusual news is going to be related to this change in the monarchy.
[00:01:38] But before you complain and say, hey, you said this would be “unusual”, and I already knew about this queen that you people seem to like so much, don’t worry, here you’ll learn what I hope will be some unusual pieces of news about the queen this year.
[00:01:53] So, firstly, you probably already knew that on February the 6th the Queen celebrated her Platinum Jubilee, her 70th anniversary as queen of the country.
[00:02:04] You might not have known that on June the 12th of this year she became the second-longest serving monarch in world history, overtaking the king of Thailand.
[00:02:16] She didn’t quite manage to claim first position, however.
[00:02:20] This is still held by King Louis XIV of France, although he did get a significant headstart on Queen Elizabeth II, because he became king when he was a mere 4 years old.
[00:02:32] And if you are wondering whether Charles, her son, will manage to beat his mother, well let me just tell you that he would have to live until his 144th birthday to manage that.
[00:02:45] But while his mother, Queen Elizabeth, did manage to live to a ripe old 96 years old, it might surprise you to find out that on Christmas Day last year, in fact, an armed intruder was arrested after attempting to break in to Windsor Castle, where the queen was staying, where he was planning to assassinate her with a crossbow, a powerful bow and arrow.
[00:03:10] Sure, this was technically news from 2021, but the unusual news from 2022 about this case is that in August of 2022, the man who attempted to kill the queen became the last person to be charged with treason, with the crime of attempting to kill the head of state.
[00:03:31] Interestingly enough, there is an act of parliament, called the 1842 Treason Act, that constitutionally allows for someone to be charged for the crime of attempting to harm the queen.
[00:03:43] Fortunately, she passed away peacefully in her bed on September the 8th, she wasn’t shot by a madman with a bow and arrow, but it is certainly interesting and refreshing that English law has an Act ready to punish anyone who attempts such a crime.
[00:04:00] Now, our second “unusual” British news story of 2022 also relates to the law, and this is a trial that was dubbed by the British press as the “Wagatha Christie” trial.
[00:04:14] In practical terms, it was a trial between two women, Rebekah Vardy and Coleen Rooney.
[00:04:22] You might not have heard of these two women before, but you may have heard of their husbands: Jamie Vardy and Wayne Rooney.
[00:04:30] If you haven’t heard of them, they are both famous English football players.
[00:04:35] So, why were these two women fighting each other in court?
[00:04:40] Well, the story went something like this.
[00:04:43] There were articles coming out in the British press about the private life of Coleen Rooney, stories that she wanted to remain private and not get leaked to the press.
[00:04:54] She thought that one of her Instagram followers was passing information about her private life to the tabloid newspapers.
[00:05:03] She suspected that it was Rebekah Vardy, the wife of her husband’s England teammate.
[00:05:10] So, what did she do?
[00:05:12] Well, she planted “fake” stories to try to catch Rebekah Vardy out.
[00:05:18] There is a setting on Instagram where you can choose to only show your Instagram Stories to certain people, so Coleen Rooney selected to only show certain stories to Rebekah Vardy.
[00:05:31] Then if these stories appeared in the British tabloids, ta-dah, she would know that it was Vardy who was responsible for passing them on to the journalists.
[00:05:42] Lo and behold, the stories did appear in the press.
[00:05:48] In 2021, Rooney shocked her followers when she revealed this plot on Twitter, and accused Rebekah Vardy of having sold these stories.
[00:05:59] Naturally, Vardy denied it, she said it wasn’t her.
[00:06:04] She didn’t need the money, and why would she do something like that to her friend?
[00:06:09] What’s more, she took Rooney to court for something called “libel”, which is the crime of accusing someone in public and harming their reputation.
[00:06:18] But Coleen Rooney stood firm, and the pair met in court.
[00:06:24] It was an extensive trial, with the British press calling Coleen “Wagatha Christie”.
[00:06:31] A “wag”, by the way, is a nickname for the wives and girlfriends of footballers, it comes from the acronym W-A-G, WAG, wives and girlfriend.
[00:06:42] And Agatha Christie was a famous British crime writer, so Rooney acquired this nickname because of her combined status as “wag” and excellent detective.
[00:06:53] On the 29th of July of 2022, the court announced its judgement.
[00:06:59] The jury concluded that there was enough evidence to suggest that Vardy had actually been guilty of leaking the stories, and the case was thrown out.
[00:07:10] The trial itself was almost like a comic soap opera, or a bad Agatha Christie novel, with Vardy’s agent claiming to have dropped her phone into the North Sea by accident, and Vardy’s supposed “IT expert” to have forgotten the password to important encrypted messaging data.
[00:07:30] It turned out that Rebekah Vardy had lost more than her dignity or a mobile phone.
[00:07:37] The judge ordered her to pay Coleen Rooney’s legal costs as well as her own, with the entire debacle estimated to have cost her £3 million pounds, so that’s almost three and a half million Euros.
[00:07:52] Now, our third category of “unusual news”, after the royals and the footballers’ wives, is relating to a category of people you might not expect to be misbehaving. Or perhaps you would completely expect it of them.
[00:08:05] And this is politicians.
[00:08:08] 2022 was a year of some pretty bad behaviour by British politicians.
[00:08:14] First, as you may remember, the British Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, was mired in controversy for the first half of the year for having held a series of parties at 10 Downing Street, at the home of the Prime Minister.
[00:08:28] In normal times, of course, there would be nothing wrong with this, especially for a prime minister who has made no secret of the fact that he enjoys having a good time.
[00:08:39] But these parties had taken place during strict COVID lockdowns, so while the Prime Minister was on TV telling people that they shouldn’t leave their houses or socialise with anyone, he was proved to be having extensive gatherings that went completely against the rules that he himself had set out.
[00:08:58] In classic Boris Johnson style, he tried to get out of these accusations, saying that he knew nothing about them and that he was sure that all of the rules had been followed, but as the months went on, more and more details emerged, including that Boris Johson knew exactly what had happened and had been at many of these parties.
[00:09:20] So, that’s certainly bad behaviour, and was one of the many reasons that Johnson was forced to resign in July of 2022.
[00:09:29] Now, the second “political misbehaviour” is a very unusual one indeed, and I’ll leave you to decide for yourself how it compares to the behaviour of Boris Johnson and the parties, or partygate as it was dubbed by the press.
[00:09:44] In April of 2022, a group of female Conservative members of parliament, or MPs, met with a senior politician to discuss the issue of sexism in Westminster, in British politics.
[00:09:58] One of the women complained that she had been sitting next to a male MP who had been watching pornography on his phone in the House of Commons, in the Houses of Parliament.
[00:10:10] If you have seen pictures or videos of the House of Commons, yes I’m talking about those long benches with green cushions, the centre of the British parliament.
[00:10:21] She didn’t name the man, but he was later revealed to be an MP called Neil Parish.
[00:10:28] And what did Mr Parish say?
[00:10:31] Did he deny it? Did he say it couldn’t possibly have been him, or that his colleague must have been mistaken in what she saw?
[00:10:39] He didn’t, actually, but his excuse wasn’t bought by everyone.
[00:10:44] He said that he was searching for tractors, and had stumbled across a pornography website, and he had continued to watch.
[00:10:54] He also admitted that he had watched porn in the House of Commons a second time, and that time he had skipped the tractors and went straight for the porn.
[00:11:05] Although his boss, Boris Johnson, had survived multiple scandals, some perhaps even more saucy than this, it was too much for Parish, and he was forced to resign his position as member of parliament.
[00:11:19] He does still claim that he was initially looking for tractors, and I’ll leave you to decide whether you believe him on that count.
[00:11:28] Our third political misbehaviour story is a slightly darker one, but it is important, and goes to show how much this behaviour was tolerated in Westminster, so much so that it has been dubbed “Pestminster” by the press.
[00:11:43] In July of 2022, another Conservative politician, a man named Chris Pincher, was forced to resign after it emerged that there were a whole range of accusations of sexual assault against him dating back 10 years, going back a decade.
[00:12:01] The culmination of all of this had been the events of one evening, on the 30th of June, when Pincher had gone to a private club in an exclusive area of London, drunk too much and sexually assaulted two men.
[00:12:16] Nasty stuff indeed, but it would have far-reaching consequences.
[00:12:21] It turned out that Boris Johnson, the then Prime Minister, knew all about Pincher’s reputation, even joking that he was “Pincher by name, pincher by nature”.
[00:12:32] If you are a pincher, by the way, it means you grab or take something from someone that you shouldn’t, or you touch them inappropriately, without their permission.
[00:12:42] Anyway, Boris Johnson knew all about Pincher’s reputation, yet he still appointed him to a senior position in government.
[00:12:51] And this was the straw that broke the camel’s back for Johnson, the nail in the coffin in his tenure as Prime Minister, and he was forced to resign a few days later.
[00:13:02] Now, you might be surprised to hear that we aren’t going to talk about Liz Truss at all in this episode.
[00:13:08] And that’s for two reasons.
[00:13:10] Firstly, it’s not completely unusual, and although there are plenty of unusual and unexpected bits of her chaotic 44 days in charge of the country, you probably know some of it already.
[00:13:22] And the second reason is that there is just so much to unpack, so we can’t do it justice in a small five minute section here.
[00:13:32] The good news is that we did just do an entire episode on the mad and tragic 44 days of Liz Truss, so if you haven’t listened to that one already, then that one's for you, it’s episode number 327.
[00:13:45] Now, the final piece of unusual news is something that lots of people aren’t aware of outside the UK, and many people aren’t aware of even inside the UK.
[00:13:56] And this is related to the shifting demographics of the country, specifically, the increasing multiculturalism of the UK.
[00:14:06] This isn’t “news”, in so much as it's a gradual change, but there are some important pieces of news to mention that highlight the increasing diversity of the country.
[00:14:18] The first piece of “unusual news” is related to the publication of the results of the national Census, a big survey that is done of the UK population every 10 years, which tries to answer questions like “how many people live in the country?” and “who are they?”.
[00:14:37] The results started to be published this year, and had, for some, surprising results, especially with the fact that the UK has been painted by many outside the country as anti-foreigner and anti-immigrant.
[00:14:52] Of course, the Brexit vote gave people a pretty good reason to think that this was the case, but the results of the Census show that the country is different to what a lot of people think, and it is indeed much more multicultural than many large European countries.
[00:15:09] So, it might surprise you to find out that one in every six people in England and Wales was born outside the UK, a 33% increase from 2011.
[00:15:23] If you’re interested, the top five countries were, in this order, India, Poland, Pakistan, Romania and Ireland.
[00:15:33] This non-UK born population is highly concentrated in the cities, which tend to be more multicultural places.
[00:15:41] One area of London, for example, Brent, has 56% of its residents who were born outside the UK.
[00:15:50] Put simply, the UK is a lot more multicultural and multinational than many people think it is.
[00:15:57] And this is particularly important when one remembers that in the summer of 2022, the Prime Minister of the country was chosen only by members of the Conservative Party, fewer than a hundred thousand people voted for Liz Truss, and these voters were overwhelmingly, 97%, white, over half of them were over 60, and they lived primarily in the south of England.
[00:16:22] Essentially, the Prime Minister was voted in by a tiny proportion of the country’s population, and a proportion of the population that was utterly unrepresentative of the real electorate.
[00:16:36] Now, as you’ll remember, the Prime Minister that was chosen by the members of the Conservative Party, Liz Truss, didn’t do a very good job at all.
[00:16:45] Nevertheless, her tenure as Prime Minister did break some records, and not only for the shortest time in office.
[00:16:53] On September the 6th of this year, when Liz Truss announced her cabinet, a record was broken.
[00:17:00] It was the first time in British history that the “Great Offices of State” didn’t contain a white man.
[00:17:07] The “Great Offices of State” are the most important political jobs in the country: so that's the Prime Minister, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, which is basically the Minister of Finance, the Foreign Secretary and the Home Secretary.
[00:17:21] Now, these politicians might have been trailblazers in terms of who they were, but they were still useless politicians and they did huge damage to the country.
[00:17:32] As you may well know, after they were booted out, the country then broke a new record when it welcomed the first non-white Prime Minister in the form of Rishi Sunak, who has Indian heritage.
[00:17:45] And another fun-fact about Rishi Sunak is that, at 42 years old, he was the youngest Prime Minister in 200 years.
[00:17:54] Although Sunak might be representative of the changing demographics of the country, he has been criticised for being pretty unrepresentative in almost every other way.
[00:18:06] Specifically, his bank balance certainly is not representative of the average person in the country.
[00:18:13] When his wife’s fortune is taken into account, Sunak holds the record for being the richest ever British Prime Minister, with a combined fortune of almost a billion Euros.
[00:18:26] So, there you have it, the unusual news of 2022.
[00:18:31] This year the UK has broken records for the longest monarch, the world’s longest-serving female monarch, the richest Prime Minister, the youngest Prime Minister, the shortest-serving Prime Minister, it’s broken multicultural records, it has seen some extremely bad behaviour from politicians, and last but not least, some exceptional detective work from footballer’s wives.
[00:18:56] OK then, that is it for today's episode on The Unusual British News of 2022.
[00:19:01] I hope it's been an interesting one, and whether it’s footballers’ wives, naughty politicians or the changing make-up of the country, that you've learnt something new about the UK.
[00:19:11] As always, I would love to know what you thought about this episode.
[00:19:14] Are there any unusual stories from the UK that you remember from this year?
[00:19:18] Do you remember how the news of the queen’s death was covered in your country?
[00:19:22] What is the most unusual news from your country this year?
[00:19:26] I would love to know, so let’s get this discussion started.
[00:19:29] You can head right into our community forum, which is at community.leonardoenglish.com and get chatting away to other curious minds.
[00:19:37] You've been listening to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:19:42] I'm Alastair Budge, you stay safe, and I'll catch you in the next episode.
[END OF EPISODE]
[00:00:00] Hello, hello hello, and welcome to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:00:12] The show where you can listen to fascinating stories, and learn weird and wonderful things about the world at the same time as improving your English.
[00:00:21] I'm Alastair Budge, and this is going to be the last episode of 2022, so today we are going to be talking about some unusual news stories from the year, stories that, even if you live in the UK or you follow British news closely, you might not have been aware of.
[00:00:38] On our little journey we’ll come across footballer’s wives, misbehaving politicians, the changing demographics of the country, a mad man with a crossbow and the crime of high treason.
[00:00:50] OK then, The Unusual British News of 2022.
[00:00:57] It might sound like an understatement to say that a lot has happened in the UK since the first of January of 2022.
[00:01:06] The country, as of the time of recording, has had three different prime ministers, experienced the hottest day on record, and the British pound dipped to an all-time low against the dollar.
[00:01:19] But perhaps the biggest national change is one you will no doubt be aware of.
[00:01:25] The country lost a queen in Elizabeth II, and got a new king, Charles the III.
[00:01:31] So, our first category of unusual news is going to be related to this change in the monarchy.
[00:01:38] But before you complain and say, hey, you said this would be “unusual”, and I already knew about this queen that you people seem to like so much, don’t worry, here you’ll learn what I hope will be some unusual pieces of news about the queen this year.
[00:01:53] So, firstly, you probably already knew that on February the 6th the Queen celebrated her Platinum Jubilee, her 70th anniversary as queen of the country.
[00:02:04] You might not have known that on June the 12th of this year she became the second-longest serving monarch in world history, overtaking the king of Thailand.
[00:02:16] She didn’t quite manage to claim first position, however.
[00:02:20] This is still held by King Louis XIV of France, although he did get a significant headstart on Queen Elizabeth II, because he became king when he was a mere 4 years old.
[00:02:32] And if you are wondering whether Charles, her son, will manage to beat his mother, well let me just tell you that he would have to live until his 144th birthday to manage that.
[00:02:45] But while his mother, Queen Elizabeth, did manage to live to a ripe old 96 years old, it might surprise you to find out that on Christmas Day last year, in fact, an armed intruder was arrested after attempting to break in to Windsor Castle, where the queen was staying, where he was planning to assassinate her with a crossbow, a powerful bow and arrow.
[00:03:10] Sure, this was technically news from 2021, but the unusual news from 2022 about this case is that in August of 2022, the man who attempted to kill the queen became the last person to be charged with treason, with the crime of attempting to kill the head of state.
[00:03:31] Interestingly enough, there is an act of parliament, called the 1842 Treason Act, that constitutionally allows for someone to be charged for the crime of attempting to harm the queen.
[00:03:43] Fortunately, she passed away peacefully in her bed on September the 8th, she wasn’t shot by a madman with a bow and arrow, but it is certainly interesting and refreshing that English law has an Act ready to punish anyone who attempts such a crime.
[00:04:00] Now, our second “unusual” British news story of 2022 also relates to the law, and this is a trial that was dubbed by the British press as the “Wagatha Christie” trial.
[00:04:14] In practical terms, it was a trial between two women, Rebekah Vardy and Coleen Rooney.
[00:04:22] You might not have heard of these two women before, but you may have heard of their husbands: Jamie Vardy and Wayne Rooney.
[00:04:30] If you haven’t heard of them, they are both famous English football players.
[00:04:35] So, why were these two women fighting each other in court?
[00:04:40] Well, the story went something like this.
[00:04:43] There were articles coming out in the British press about the private life of Coleen Rooney, stories that she wanted to remain private and not get leaked to the press.
[00:04:54] She thought that one of her Instagram followers was passing information about her private life to the tabloid newspapers.
[00:05:03] She suspected that it was Rebekah Vardy, the wife of her husband’s England teammate.
[00:05:10] So, what did she do?
[00:05:12] Well, she planted “fake” stories to try to catch Rebekah Vardy out.
[00:05:18] There is a setting on Instagram where you can choose to only show your Instagram Stories to certain people, so Coleen Rooney selected to only show certain stories to Rebekah Vardy.
[00:05:31] Then if these stories appeared in the British tabloids, ta-dah, she would know that it was Vardy who was responsible for passing them on to the journalists.
[00:05:42] Lo and behold, the stories did appear in the press.
[00:05:48] In 2021, Rooney shocked her followers when she revealed this plot on Twitter, and accused Rebekah Vardy of having sold these stories.
[00:05:59] Naturally, Vardy denied it, she said it wasn’t her.
[00:06:04] She didn’t need the money, and why would she do something like that to her friend?
[00:06:09] What’s more, she took Rooney to court for something called “libel”, which is the crime of accusing someone in public and harming their reputation.
[00:06:18] But Coleen Rooney stood firm, and the pair met in court.
[00:06:24] It was an extensive trial, with the British press calling Coleen “Wagatha Christie”.
[00:06:31] A “wag”, by the way, is a nickname for the wives and girlfriends of footballers, it comes from the acronym W-A-G, WAG, wives and girlfriend.
[00:06:42] And Agatha Christie was a famous British crime writer, so Rooney acquired this nickname because of her combined status as “wag” and excellent detective.
[00:06:53] On the 29th of July of 2022, the court announced its judgement.
[00:06:59] The jury concluded that there was enough evidence to suggest that Vardy had actually been guilty of leaking the stories, and the case was thrown out.
[00:07:10] The trial itself was almost like a comic soap opera, or a bad Agatha Christie novel, with Vardy’s agent claiming to have dropped her phone into the North Sea by accident, and Vardy’s supposed “IT expert” to have forgotten the password to important encrypted messaging data.
[00:07:30] It turned out that Rebekah Vardy had lost more than her dignity or a mobile phone.
[00:07:37] The judge ordered her to pay Coleen Rooney’s legal costs as well as her own, with the entire debacle estimated to have cost her £3 million pounds, so that’s almost three and a half million Euros.
[00:07:52] Now, our third category of “unusual news”, after the royals and the footballers’ wives, is relating to a category of people you might not expect to be misbehaving. Or perhaps you would completely expect it of them.
[00:08:05] And this is politicians.
[00:08:08] 2022 was a year of some pretty bad behaviour by British politicians.
[00:08:14] First, as you may remember, the British Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, was mired in controversy for the first half of the year for having held a series of parties at 10 Downing Street, at the home of the Prime Minister.
[00:08:28] In normal times, of course, there would be nothing wrong with this, especially for a prime minister who has made no secret of the fact that he enjoys having a good time.
[00:08:39] But these parties had taken place during strict COVID lockdowns, so while the Prime Minister was on TV telling people that they shouldn’t leave their houses or socialise with anyone, he was proved to be having extensive gatherings that went completely against the rules that he himself had set out.
[00:08:58] In classic Boris Johnson style, he tried to get out of these accusations, saying that he knew nothing about them and that he was sure that all of the rules had been followed, but as the months went on, more and more details emerged, including that Boris Johson knew exactly what had happened and had been at many of these parties.
[00:09:20] So, that’s certainly bad behaviour, and was one of the many reasons that Johnson was forced to resign in July of 2022.
[00:09:29] Now, the second “political misbehaviour” is a very unusual one indeed, and I’ll leave you to decide for yourself how it compares to the behaviour of Boris Johnson and the parties, or partygate as it was dubbed by the press.
[00:09:44] In April of 2022, a group of female Conservative members of parliament, or MPs, met with a senior politician to discuss the issue of sexism in Westminster, in British politics.
[00:09:58] One of the women complained that she had been sitting next to a male MP who had been watching pornography on his phone in the House of Commons, in the Houses of Parliament.
[00:10:10] If you have seen pictures or videos of the House of Commons, yes I’m talking about those long benches with green cushions, the centre of the British parliament.
[00:10:21] She didn’t name the man, but he was later revealed to be an MP called Neil Parish.
[00:10:28] And what did Mr Parish say?
[00:10:31] Did he deny it? Did he say it couldn’t possibly have been him, or that his colleague must have been mistaken in what she saw?
[00:10:39] He didn’t, actually, but his excuse wasn’t bought by everyone.
[00:10:44] He said that he was searching for tractors, and had stumbled across a pornography website, and he had continued to watch.
[00:10:54] He also admitted that he had watched porn in the House of Commons a second time, and that time he had skipped the tractors and went straight for the porn.
[00:11:05] Although his boss, Boris Johnson, had survived multiple scandals, some perhaps even more saucy than this, it was too much for Parish, and he was forced to resign his position as member of parliament.
[00:11:19] He does still claim that he was initially looking for tractors, and I’ll leave you to decide whether you believe him on that count.
[00:11:28] Our third political misbehaviour story is a slightly darker one, but it is important, and goes to show how much this behaviour was tolerated in Westminster, so much so that it has been dubbed “Pestminster” by the press.
[00:11:43] In July of 2022, another Conservative politician, a man named Chris Pincher, was forced to resign after it emerged that there were a whole range of accusations of sexual assault against him dating back 10 years, going back a decade.
[00:12:01] The culmination of all of this had been the events of one evening, on the 30th of June, when Pincher had gone to a private club in an exclusive area of London, drunk too much and sexually assaulted two men.
[00:12:16] Nasty stuff indeed, but it would have far-reaching consequences.
[00:12:21] It turned out that Boris Johnson, the then Prime Minister, knew all about Pincher’s reputation, even joking that he was “Pincher by name, pincher by nature”.
[00:12:32] If you are a pincher, by the way, it means you grab or take something from someone that you shouldn’t, or you touch them inappropriately, without their permission.
[00:12:42] Anyway, Boris Johnson knew all about Pincher’s reputation, yet he still appointed him to a senior position in government.
[00:12:51] And this was the straw that broke the camel’s back for Johnson, the nail in the coffin in his tenure as Prime Minister, and he was forced to resign a few days later.
[00:13:02] Now, you might be surprised to hear that we aren’t going to talk about Liz Truss at all in this episode.
[00:13:08] And that’s for two reasons.
[00:13:10] Firstly, it’s not completely unusual, and although there are plenty of unusual and unexpected bits of her chaotic 44 days in charge of the country, you probably know some of it already.
[00:13:22] And the second reason is that there is just so much to unpack, so we can’t do it justice in a small five minute section here.
[00:13:32] The good news is that we did just do an entire episode on the mad and tragic 44 days of Liz Truss, so if you haven’t listened to that one already, then that one's for you, it’s episode number 327.
[00:13:45] Now, the final piece of unusual news is something that lots of people aren’t aware of outside the UK, and many people aren’t aware of even inside the UK.
[00:13:56] And this is related to the shifting demographics of the country, specifically, the increasing multiculturalism of the UK.
[00:14:06] This isn’t “news”, in so much as it's a gradual change, but there are some important pieces of news to mention that highlight the increasing diversity of the country.
[00:14:18] The first piece of “unusual news” is related to the publication of the results of the national Census, a big survey that is done of the UK population every 10 years, which tries to answer questions like “how many people live in the country?” and “who are they?”.
[00:14:37] The results started to be published this year, and had, for some, surprising results, especially with the fact that the UK has been painted by many outside the country as anti-foreigner and anti-immigrant.
[00:14:52] Of course, the Brexit vote gave people a pretty good reason to think that this was the case, but the results of the Census show that the country is different to what a lot of people think, and it is indeed much more multicultural than many large European countries.
[00:15:09] So, it might surprise you to find out that one in every six people in England and Wales was born outside the UK, a 33% increase from 2011.
[00:15:23] If you’re interested, the top five countries were, in this order, India, Poland, Pakistan, Romania and Ireland.
[00:15:33] This non-UK born population is highly concentrated in the cities, which tend to be more multicultural places.
[00:15:41] One area of London, for example, Brent, has 56% of its residents who were born outside the UK.
[00:15:50] Put simply, the UK is a lot more multicultural and multinational than many people think it is.
[00:15:57] And this is particularly important when one remembers that in the summer of 2022, the Prime Minister of the country was chosen only by members of the Conservative Party, fewer than a hundred thousand people voted for Liz Truss, and these voters were overwhelmingly, 97%, white, over half of them were over 60, and they lived primarily in the south of England.
[00:16:22] Essentially, the Prime Minister was voted in by a tiny proportion of the country’s population, and a proportion of the population that was utterly unrepresentative of the real electorate.
[00:16:36] Now, as you’ll remember, the Prime Minister that was chosen by the members of the Conservative Party, Liz Truss, didn’t do a very good job at all.
[00:16:45] Nevertheless, her tenure as Prime Minister did break some records, and not only for the shortest time in office.
[00:16:53] On September the 6th of this year, when Liz Truss announced her cabinet, a record was broken.
[00:17:00] It was the first time in British history that the “Great Offices of State” didn’t contain a white man.
[00:17:07] The “Great Offices of State” are the most important political jobs in the country: so that's the Prime Minister, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, which is basically the Minister of Finance, the Foreign Secretary and the Home Secretary.
[00:17:21] Now, these politicians might have been trailblazers in terms of who they were, but they were still useless politicians and they did huge damage to the country.
[00:17:32] As you may well know, after they were booted out, the country then broke a new record when it welcomed the first non-white Prime Minister in the form of Rishi Sunak, who has Indian heritage.
[00:17:45] And another fun-fact about Rishi Sunak is that, at 42 years old, he was the youngest Prime Minister in 200 years.
[00:17:54] Although Sunak might be representative of the changing demographics of the country, he has been criticised for being pretty unrepresentative in almost every other way.
[00:18:06] Specifically, his bank balance certainly is not representative of the average person in the country.
[00:18:13] When his wife’s fortune is taken into account, Sunak holds the record for being the richest ever British Prime Minister, with a combined fortune of almost a billion Euros.
[00:18:26] So, there you have it, the unusual news of 2022.
[00:18:31] This year the UK has broken records for the longest monarch, the world’s longest-serving female monarch, the richest Prime Minister, the youngest Prime Minister, the shortest-serving Prime Minister, it’s broken multicultural records, it has seen some extremely bad behaviour from politicians, and last but not least, some exceptional detective work from footballer’s wives.
[00:18:56] OK then, that is it for today's episode on The Unusual British News of 2022.
[00:19:01] I hope it's been an interesting one, and whether it’s footballers’ wives, naughty politicians or the changing make-up of the country, that you've learnt something new about the UK.
[00:19:11] As always, I would love to know what you thought about this episode.
[00:19:14] Are there any unusual stories from the UK that you remember from this year?
[00:19:18] Do you remember how the news of the queen’s death was covered in your country?
[00:19:22] What is the most unusual news from your country this year?
[00:19:26] I would love to know, so let’s get this discussion started.
[00:19:29] You can head right into our community forum, which is at community.leonardoenglish.com and get chatting away to other curious minds.
[00:19:37] You've been listening to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:19:42] I'm Alastair Budge, you stay safe, and I'll catch you in the next episode.
[END OF EPISODE]
[00:00:00] Hello, hello hello, and welcome to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:00:12] The show where you can listen to fascinating stories, and learn weird and wonderful things about the world at the same time as improving your English.
[00:00:21] I'm Alastair Budge, and this is going to be the last episode of 2022, so today we are going to be talking about some unusual news stories from the year, stories that, even if you live in the UK or you follow British news closely, you might not have been aware of.
[00:00:38] On our little journey we’ll come across footballer’s wives, misbehaving politicians, the changing demographics of the country, a mad man with a crossbow and the crime of high treason.
[00:00:50] OK then, The Unusual British News of 2022.
[00:00:57] It might sound like an understatement to say that a lot has happened in the UK since the first of January of 2022.
[00:01:06] The country, as of the time of recording, has had three different prime ministers, experienced the hottest day on record, and the British pound dipped to an all-time low against the dollar.
[00:01:19] But perhaps the biggest national change is one you will no doubt be aware of.
[00:01:25] The country lost a queen in Elizabeth II, and got a new king, Charles the III.
[00:01:31] So, our first category of unusual news is going to be related to this change in the monarchy.
[00:01:38] But before you complain and say, hey, you said this would be “unusual”, and I already knew about this queen that you people seem to like so much, don’t worry, here you’ll learn what I hope will be some unusual pieces of news about the queen this year.
[00:01:53] So, firstly, you probably already knew that on February the 6th the Queen celebrated her Platinum Jubilee, her 70th anniversary as queen of the country.
[00:02:04] You might not have known that on June the 12th of this year she became the second-longest serving monarch in world history, overtaking the king of Thailand.
[00:02:16] She didn’t quite manage to claim first position, however.
[00:02:20] This is still held by King Louis XIV of France, although he did get a significant headstart on Queen Elizabeth II, because he became king when he was a mere 4 years old.
[00:02:32] And if you are wondering whether Charles, her son, will manage to beat his mother, well let me just tell you that he would have to live until his 144th birthday to manage that.
[00:02:45] But while his mother, Queen Elizabeth, did manage to live to a ripe old 96 years old, it might surprise you to find out that on Christmas Day last year, in fact, an armed intruder was arrested after attempting to break in to Windsor Castle, where the queen was staying, where he was planning to assassinate her with a crossbow, a powerful bow and arrow.
[00:03:10] Sure, this was technically news from 2021, but the unusual news from 2022 about this case is that in August of 2022, the man who attempted to kill the queen became the last person to be charged with treason, with the crime of attempting to kill the head of state.
[00:03:31] Interestingly enough, there is an act of parliament, called the 1842 Treason Act, that constitutionally allows for someone to be charged for the crime of attempting to harm the queen.
[00:03:43] Fortunately, she passed away peacefully in her bed on September the 8th, she wasn’t shot by a madman with a bow and arrow, but it is certainly interesting and refreshing that English law has an Act ready to punish anyone who attempts such a crime.
[00:04:00] Now, our second “unusual” British news story of 2022 also relates to the law, and this is a trial that was dubbed by the British press as the “Wagatha Christie” trial.
[00:04:14] In practical terms, it was a trial between two women, Rebekah Vardy and Coleen Rooney.
[00:04:22] You might not have heard of these two women before, but you may have heard of their husbands: Jamie Vardy and Wayne Rooney.
[00:04:30] If you haven’t heard of them, they are both famous English football players.
[00:04:35] So, why were these two women fighting each other in court?
[00:04:40] Well, the story went something like this.
[00:04:43] There were articles coming out in the British press about the private life of Coleen Rooney, stories that she wanted to remain private and not get leaked to the press.
[00:04:54] She thought that one of her Instagram followers was passing information about her private life to the tabloid newspapers.
[00:05:03] She suspected that it was Rebekah Vardy, the wife of her husband’s England teammate.
[00:05:10] So, what did she do?
[00:05:12] Well, she planted “fake” stories to try to catch Rebekah Vardy out.
[00:05:18] There is a setting on Instagram where you can choose to only show your Instagram Stories to certain people, so Coleen Rooney selected to only show certain stories to Rebekah Vardy.
[00:05:31] Then if these stories appeared in the British tabloids, ta-dah, she would know that it was Vardy who was responsible for passing them on to the journalists.
[00:05:42] Lo and behold, the stories did appear in the press.
[00:05:48] In 2021, Rooney shocked her followers when she revealed this plot on Twitter, and accused Rebekah Vardy of having sold these stories.
[00:05:59] Naturally, Vardy denied it, she said it wasn’t her.
[00:06:04] She didn’t need the money, and why would she do something like that to her friend?
[00:06:09] What’s more, she took Rooney to court for something called “libel”, which is the crime of accusing someone in public and harming their reputation.
[00:06:18] But Coleen Rooney stood firm, and the pair met in court.
[00:06:24] It was an extensive trial, with the British press calling Coleen “Wagatha Christie”.
[00:06:31] A “wag”, by the way, is a nickname for the wives and girlfriends of footballers, it comes from the acronym W-A-G, WAG, wives and girlfriend.
[00:06:42] And Agatha Christie was a famous British crime writer, so Rooney acquired this nickname because of her combined status as “wag” and excellent detective.
[00:06:53] On the 29th of July of 2022, the court announced its judgement.
[00:06:59] The jury concluded that there was enough evidence to suggest that Vardy had actually been guilty of leaking the stories, and the case was thrown out.
[00:07:10] The trial itself was almost like a comic soap opera, or a bad Agatha Christie novel, with Vardy’s agent claiming to have dropped her phone into the North Sea by accident, and Vardy’s supposed “IT expert” to have forgotten the password to important encrypted messaging data.
[00:07:30] It turned out that Rebekah Vardy had lost more than her dignity or a mobile phone.
[00:07:37] The judge ordered her to pay Coleen Rooney’s legal costs as well as her own, with the entire debacle estimated to have cost her £3 million pounds, so that’s almost three and a half million Euros.
[00:07:52] Now, our third category of “unusual news”, after the royals and the footballers’ wives, is relating to a category of people you might not expect to be misbehaving. Or perhaps you would completely expect it of them.
[00:08:05] And this is politicians.
[00:08:08] 2022 was a year of some pretty bad behaviour by British politicians.
[00:08:14] First, as you may remember, the British Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, was mired in controversy for the first half of the year for having held a series of parties at 10 Downing Street, at the home of the Prime Minister.
[00:08:28] In normal times, of course, there would be nothing wrong with this, especially for a prime minister who has made no secret of the fact that he enjoys having a good time.
[00:08:39] But these parties had taken place during strict COVID lockdowns, so while the Prime Minister was on TV telling people that they shouldn’t leave their houses or socialise with anyone, he was proved to be having extensive gatherings that went completely against the rules that he himself had set out.
[00:08:58] In classic Boris Johnson style, he tried to get out of these accusations, saying that he knew nothing about them and that he was sure that all of the rules had been followed, but as the months went on, more and more details emerged, including that Boris Johson knew exactly what had happened and had been at many of these parties.
[00:09:20] So, that’s certainly bad behaviour, and was one of the many reasons that Johnson was forced to resign in July of 2022.
[00:09:29] Now, the second “political misbehaviour” is a very unusual one indeed, and I’ll leave you to decide for yourself how it compares to the behaviour of Boris Johnson and the parties, or partygate as it was dubbed by the press.
[00:09:44] In April of 2022, a group of female Conservative members of parliament, or MPs, met with a senior politician to discuss the issue of sexism in Westminster, in British politics.
[00:09:58] One of the women complained that she had been sitting next to a male MP who had been watching pornography on his phone in the House of Commons, in the Houses of Parliament.
[00:10:10] If you have seen pictures or videos of the House of Commons, yes I’m talking about those long benches with green cushions, the centre of the British parliament.
[00:10:21] She didn’t name the man, but he was later revealed to be an MP called Neil Parish.
[00:10:28] And what did Mr Parish say?
[00:10:31] Did he deny it? Did he say it couldn’t possibly have been him, or that his colleague must have been mistaken in what she saw?
[00:10:39] He didn’t, actually, but his excuse wasn’t bought by everyone.
[00:10:44] He said that he was searching for tractors, and had stumbled across a pornography website, and he had continued to watch.
[00:10:54] He also admitted that he had watched porn in the House of Commons a second time, and that time he had skipped the tractors and went straight for the porn.
[00:11:05] Although his boss, Boris Johnson, had survived multiple scandals, some perhaps even more saucy than this, it was too much for Parish, and he was forced to resign his position as member of parliament.
[00:11:19] He does still claim that he was initially looking for tractors, and I’ll leave you to decide whether you believe him on that count.
[00:11:28] Our third political misbehaviour story is a slightly darker one, but it is important, and goes to show how much this behaviour was tolerated in Westminster, so much so that it has been dubbed “Pestminster” by the press.
[00:11:43] In July of 2022, another Conservative politician, a man named Chris Pincher, was forced to resign after it emerged that there were a whole range of accusations of sexual assault against him dating back 10 years, going back a decade.
[00:12:01] The culmination of all of this had been the events of one evening, on the 30th of June, when Pincher had gone to a private club in an exclusive area of London, drunk too much and sexually assaulted two men.
[00:12:16] Nasty stuff indeed, but it would have far-reaching consequences.
[00:12:21] It turned out that Boris Johnson, the then Prime Minister, knew all about Pincher’s reputation, even joking that he was “Pincher by name, pincher by nature”.
[00:12:32] If you are a pincher, by the way, it means you grab or take something from someone that you shouldn’t, or you touch them inappropriately, without their permission.
[00:12:42] Anyway, Boris Johnson knew all about Pincher’s reputation, yet he still appointed him to a senior position in government.
[00:12:51] And this was the straw that broke the camel’s back for Johnson, the nail in the coffin in his tenure as Prime Minister, and he was forced to resign a few days later.
[00:13:02] Now, you might be surprised to hear that we aren’t going to talk about Liz Truss at all in this episode.
[00:13:08] And that’s for two reasons.
[00:13:10] Firstly, it’s not completely unusual, and although there are plenty of unusual and unexpected bits of her chaotic 44 days in charge of the country, you probably know some of it already.
[00:13:22] And the second reason is that there is just so much to unpack, so we can’t do it justice in a small five minute section here.
[00:13:32] The good news is that we did just do an entire episode on the mad and tragic 44 days of Liz Truss, so if you haven’t listened to that one already, then that one's for you, it’s episode number 327.
[00:13:45] Now, the final piece of unusual news is something that lots of people aren’t aware of outside the UK, and many people aren’t aware of even inside the UK.
[00:13:56] And this is related to the shifting demographics of the country, specifically, the increasing multiculturalism of the UK.
[00:14:06] This isn’t “news”, in so much as it's a gradual change, but there are some important pieces of news to mention that highlight the increasing diversity of the country.
[00:14:18] The first piece of “unusual news” is related to the publication of the results of the national Census, a big survey that is done of the UK population every 10 years, which tries to answer questions like “how many people live in the country?” and “who are they?”.
[00:14:37] The results started to be published this year, and had, for some, surprising results, especially with the fact that the UK has been painted by many outside the country as anti-foreigner and anti-immigrant.
[00:14:52] Of course, the Brexit vote gave people a pretty good reason to think that this was the case, but the results of the Census show that the country is different to what a lot of people think, and it is indeed much more multicultural than many large European countries.
[00:15:09] So, it might surprise you to find out that one in every six people in England and Wales was born outside the UK, a 33% increase from 2011.
[00:15:23] If you’re interested, the top five countries were, in this order, India, Poland, Pakistan, Romania and Ireland.
[00:15:33] This non-UK born population is highly concentrated in the cities, which tend to be more multicultural places.
[00:15:41] One area of London, for example, Brent, has 56% of its residents who were born outside the UK.
[00:15:50] Put simply, the UK is a lot more multicultural and multinational than many people think it is.
[00:15:57] And this is particularly important when one remembers that in the summer of 2022, the Prime Minister of the country was chosen only by members of the Conservative Party, fewer than a hundred thousand people voted for Liz Truss, and these voters were overwhelmingly, 97%, white, over half of them were over 60, and they lived primarily in the south of England.
[00:16:22] Essentially, the Prime Minister was voted in by a tiny proportion of the country’s population, and a proportion of the population that was utterly unrepresentative of the real electorate.
[00:16:36] Now, as you’ll remember, the Prime Minister that was chosen by the members of the Conservative Party, Liz Truss, didn’t do a very good job at all.
[00:16:45] Nevertheless, her tenure as Prime Minister did break some records, and not only for the shortest time in office.
[00:16:53] On September the 6th of this year, when Liz Truss announced her cabinet, a record was broken.
[00:17:00] It was the first time in British history that the “Great Offices of State” didn’t contain a white man.
[00:17:07] The “Great Offices of State” are the most important political jobs in the country: so that's the Prime Minister, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, which is basically the Minister of Finance, the Foreign Secretary and the Home Secretary.
[00:17:21] Now, these politicians might have been trailblazers in terms of who they were, but they were still useless politicians and they did huge damage to the country.
[00:17:32] As you may well know, after they were booted out, the country then broke a new record when it welcomed the first non-white Prime Minister in the form of Rishi Sunak, who has Indian heritage.
[00:17:45] And another fun-fact about Rishi Sunak is that, at 42 years old, he was the youngest Prime Minister in 200 years.
[00:17:54] Although Sunak might be representative of the changing demographics of the country, he has been criticised for being pretty unrepresentative in almost every other way.
[00:18:06] Specifically, his bank balance certainly is not representative of the average person in the country.
[00:18:13] When his wife’s fortune is taken into account, Sunak holds the record for being the richest ever British Prime Minister, with a combined fortune of almost a billion Euros.
[00:18:26] So, there you have it, the unusual news of 2022.
[00:18:31] This year the UK has broken records for the longest monarch, the world’s longest-serving female monarch, the richest Prime Minister, the youngest Prime Minister, the shortest-serving Prime Minister, it’s broken multicultural records, it has seen some extremely bad behaviour from politicians, and last but not least, some exceptional detective work from footballer’s wives.
[00:18:56] OK then, that is it for today's episode on The Unusual British News of 2022.
[00:19:01] I hope it's been an interesting one, and whether it’s footballers’ wives, naughty politicians or the changing make-up of the country, that you've learnt something new about the UK.
[00:19:11] As always, I would love to know what you thought about this episode.
[00:19:14] Are there any unusual stories from the UK that you remember from this year?
[00:19:18] Do you remember how the news of the queen’s death was covered in your country?
[00:19:22] What is the most unusual news from your country this year?
[00:19:26] I would love to know, so let’s get this discussion started.
[00:19:29] You can head right into our community forum, which is at community.leonardoenglish.com and get chatting away to other curious minds.
[00:19:37] You've been listening to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:19:42] I'm Alastair Budge, you stay safe, and I'll catch you in the next episode.
[END OF EPISODE]
