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: City slackers, named again. List of Bristol City Councillors who either do not respond to phone or emails or do not wish to share their views with us on BCfm’s politics show. Conservatives 36%; Liberal Democrat 28%; Labour 18% and Green 0%. Bristol freemasonry: we appeal for a copy of the Bristol Provincial yearbook, still not supplied as promised by Bristol freemason Conservative MP Jack Lopresti, which lists Bristol’s 2000 or so Freemasons in 50 or so masonic lodges. A vision for the city. Lax HSBC controls allowed Mexican drug cartels to launder £4.5 billion and David Cameron’s Coalition Government Trade Minister Lord Green was running the HSBC bank at the time. Criminals running the NATO zone banking system. £3.6m cuts mean nearly 200 people will be made homeless after Bristol City Council announces closure of 8 care homes, plus 130 job losses. Bristol has 20,000 homeless people, Tony Crofts suggests we should convert Bristol’s 1.75 million (not thousand, apologies) square feet of empty office space into 70-80,000 homes. IMF says the UK must boost government spending to save the economy and should relax spending cuts. Labour’s mayoral candidate, our guest Marvin Rees, branded naive and weak by LibDem Councillor Gary Hopkins over his appearance at last Saturday’s anti-EDL rally. Unemployment falls for the 4th month in a row down to 8.1%. BBC riots drama banned by judge, but it looks like it will eventually be screened. News review with Labour’s candidate for mayor of Bristol, Marvin Rees.
[audio: 201207201700]

Second hour: Bomb attacks rock Syrian security ministry killing two generals and more, were attacks timed to coincide withy UN Security Council vote? The best English language source of Syrian news, the excellent analysis from Syrian Arab News Service (SANA) website www.sana.sy is unavailable so NATO/Israeli cyberwarfare and psychological warfare may be going on. However the UN’s Syrian ambassador Dr. Bashar Al Jaafari’s speech on 19 July 2012, as Russia and China vetoed the US’s Syria sanctions resolution at the UN, is available. Head of German Secret Service Heinz Fromm resigns after covering up for a murderous domestic neo-Nazi terror group. Operation Gladio: Richard Cotterell and Daniele Ganser have written books and Alan Frankovich made a series of three BBC Timewatch documentaries on domestic terrorism carried out mainly in the 1980s by NATO and crypto-fascist Western Intelligence Agencies. Our own domestic counter-intelligence agency MI5’s Director General and Bilderberger Jonathan Evans said on Channel 4 News, before the G4S olympics security scandal story broke, that the only danger at the Olympics was from Iran, whilst we now know it was ‘wide open’ for any terrorist. Why would Evans make such a statement which could not be further from the truth? Strike action at Bristol Remploy this and next Thursday, appeal for supporters to join striking disabled workers’ picket next Thursday. Mass demonstrations of 400,000 people against the lack of democracy in Hong Kong 15 years after failed MP Chris Patten handed it to China. Repression and resistance in China: Wukan, a town of 40,000 people, sacks local Communist Party leaders and institutes a democratic system for three months before being repressed. Big increase in demonstrations in China which are illegal there. Sally Tang from Socialist Action  reports from former British colony of Hong Kong fifteen years after it was reclaimed by China. Petition to get Bristol’s extra £20m police funding; abolition of Avon & Somerset’s democratic police authority and replacement with elected Police and Crime Commissioners on the horizon and the G4S private security fiasco at the olympics. Implications for privatising the police. Kevin Phillips from Avon and Somerset Police Federation which represents 3000 police officers in our local force. Dave Redgewell from SW SERA discusses the effects of rail privatisation and the McNulty report deregulating and demanning national railways.
[audio: 201207201800]