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

First hour: News review with Bristol Respect party mayoral candidate Paulette North. What does the Respect party stand for? Respect; Equality; Socialism; Peace; Environment; Community & Trade-unionism. Will the left wing vote be split in November’s election for mayor? This is not a Euro crisis but a crisis of private banking. The banks are already bust and there will inevitably be a colossal financial meltdown at some point in the future. Latest Eurozone crisis. The free market solution to the financial crisis is a crash. Surely you can’t just make up money out of nowhere and give it to the banks? Yes the Bank of England can! Will a panic one morning lead to a total financial meltdown? Euro crisis is a game of chicken between the Greeks and the Germans. Lessons we must learn from the Icelandic bank nationalisation NASDAQ flotation of Facebook today. Respect want a new local income tax. Cameronite 301 group conduct takeover of Tories’ back-bench 1922 committee which can force a leadership election. Should there be any limits to immigration? Lithuanian man jailed for 18 months after failing to pay his £250 London to Bristol cab fare & pulling a knife, after just arriving in UK. Paulette wants a no borders policy because she believes our immigration laws are racist. So if you think there is too much immigration does that make you a racist? Is immigration causing our housing crisis or ? Why no UK staff at Pret-A-Manger? Is open borders policy part of an effort to abolish the state? Should we keep British Jobs for British Workers? Are British workers lazy? Royal College of Nursing staff ask questions of the NHS privatising Health Secretary Andrew Lansley at their annual conference. Now we have fixed term parliaments Vernon Bogdanor asks: if LibDems jump ship might the queen then ask Ed Miliband to form a government? First charges in the phone hacking scandal. Rebekah Brooks, her husband Charlie and five others charged with several counts of Conspiracy to Pervert the course of justice by Alison Levitt QC at the office of the Director of Public Prosecutions. Council order Withywood residents to return community garden to wasteland.
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Second hour: Reconnaissance around global and intelligence news stories: Dictators’ dinner and liars’ lunch today hosted by the Queen & Prince Charles at Windsor Castle and Buckingham Palace. Do these figureheads have any real power? G8 summit at Camp David followed by NATO summit in Chicago. Remembering the British military coup attempt against Prime Minister Harold Wilson in 1975 as recorded in ‘The Pencourt Files’ by Barrie Penrose & Roger Courtiour and BBC docudrama The Plot Against Harold Wilson (2006). The Spanish Order of the Golden Fleece which goes back to Medieval times and takes its name from the Greeks’ legendary Golden Fleece from the ram-god Krios’ which was on the island of Colchis which was a charm for prosperity in Homer’s stories of Jason and the Argonauts. Russians threaten to destroy NATO’s missile defence shield in Poland and Romania. NATO ramps up tension against the Chinese in the Spratly islands in the South China sea but who stands to gain from increasing tension? Are our arms firms and their foreign dealings encouraging terrorism here in Britain? Privatising AbbeyWood MoD procurement with arms manufacturers BAe Systems in the running. The Olympic Torch trail from Greece was started in 1936 by the Nazis for the Berlin Olympics. Queen of Disco Donna Summer believed her lung cancer was caused by inhaling New York’s 9/11 dust. Sex, spies and seven suspicious deaths: The murky waters of the intelligence world – coincidence or conspiracy? Phil Gibbons reports from modern artist Sam Bompas’ jelly event at the SS Great Britain. Cliff Hanley from Bristol’s Palestine Solidarity Campaign was beaten up and disabled in Bristol city centre by a  far right drunk on Good Friday 2011. Although the attacker has allegedly been identified by six eyewitnesses, the police will not charge the man. How to fight a war without hurting anyone. Bristol’s Lincombe Barn wargaming society hold their annual table-top sale between 10am & 1pm on Sunday. Use of the new US magazine Modern War as propaganda, perpetuating myths & covering for US black ops such as Iran starting a war in the Middle East. Modern wars increasingly being fought not by Generals but by colossal NATO computers such as the one at the Corsham Computer Centre (CCC) housed deep underground near Copenacre in the old stone mines between Bath and Chippenham.
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