Friday Drivetime

BCfm’s weekly politics show presented by Tony Gosling

At five: discussing the big stories in Bristol, Britain and around the world

After six: straight talking and investigative reports with Martin Summers and Marina Morris

For all the shows back to Easter 2009 visit the Friday Drivetime archive page.

First hour: Review of today’s mayoral referendum result. The ‘Yes’ campaign won a majority in Bristol on about 5000 votes which is a 6.7% majority on a 25% turnout, but concerns are being raised by elected member’s question over why the ballot boxes were kept overnight in a highly politicised private business premises, Bristol City Football Club at Ashton Gate, owned by tax exile and long time critic of Bristol City Council Stephen Lansdown, giving him and his colleagues to possibility of interfering in the electoral process overnight. Whitehall and Westminster stranglehold over our Bristol politics. Mayor will be able to appoint well paid ‘advisers’. Former slave traders ‘The Merchant Venturers’, local paper ‘The Post’ and the business community of Bristol appear to annoint architect and Merchant Venturer, George Ferguson, as their favoured candidate for mayor in November 2012. Shambles extraordinaire as we ask sould there have been a referendum at all when we still do not know what the mayor’s powers will be? We’re also joined by Craig Clarke who intends to stand for mayor in November 2012. We look at the changing career trajectories of Members of Parliament who are looking more like Public Relations agents for The City of London than public servants. Proposal of Cllr. Tim Kent to ‘get tough’ with First Bus and take over Bristol’s Buses? Perhaps. Argentina and Bolivia begin to privatise foreign owned energy companies. Thames Water have closed 25 reservoirs causing bizarre ‘water shortages’ during a spell of 180 flood warnings in Southern England. Could water bill payers and Thames Water be the victims of yet another EU directive?
[audio: 201205041700]

Second hour: Keith Evans from Bristol and District Anti-Cuts Alliance (BADACA) on tomorrow’s March For The NHS which is taking place from 11am at College Green. Gerald Celente, editor of the New York Trends Journal site explains how the US is becoming a fascist country on the RT show The Keiser Report.
Niall Warry from the BBC Institutional Bias blog discusses what happened when he refused to pay his licence fee and how more and more BBC Refusniks are doing this sucessfully. We look at the pro-Nazi fascist opinions of the first BBC Director General Lord Reith and how he kept Hitler’s critic Sir Winston Churchill off the air. Two programmes that caused controversy in the 1980s were Panorama’s ‘Maggie’s Militant Tendency’ showing some Tory MP’s in far right meetings. Also Duncan Campbell’s Secret Society series in 1987. We discuss the subsequent sacking of BBC Director General Alasdair Milne in January 1987 and explain that Victor Rothschild, of ‘Spycatcher’ fame, was behind that decision. More recently we discuss BBC World’s on air apology after their embarassing transmission of several documentaries which were in fact paid for propaganda by the Maylaysian government. BBC2 Newsnight’s latest political editor Allegra Stratton has a deal with publishers Simon & Schuster for a book eulogising the Miliband brothers including what Ed Miliband as Prime Minister would mean for Britain. Also the reasons for the departure of Newsnight’s former political editor Michael Crick after the BBC insisted on deleting & wiping many hours of his interviews with the heavyweights of British political life. It’s as if the BBC did not want us, or future generations, to be able to keep track of the opinions and statements of our politicians. Certainly smacks of extreme control-freakery by Newsnight and BBC Current Affairs managers who we never see on-screen.
[audio: 201205041800]