Fri15Mar

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: Bedroom tax; Kingswood Tory MP Chris Skidmore blames Labour for NHS failings at Prime Minister’s Questions; Introduction to Mark Wright, Lib Dem councillor for Cabot ward. Discussion includes former Energy Secretary Chris Huhne going to prison, Schools minister David Laws’ £40,000 MP’s Expenses scandal fine, LibDem leader Nick Clegg overturning LibDem party democracy on secret courts and the LibDem spring conference.  Martin Summers is asked what he thinks about next week’s budget and the wisdom of cuts. Clip of Liam Fox and his cutting tax and benefits plans for the economy. Universal credit & the more developed Citizen’s income as proposed by the Green party here in the UK and newly elected Grillo in Italy. PMQ clip of Miliband and Cameron on the bedroom tax from last week vs. the way Cameron is treating the bankers. Discussion including  how the local council and housing associations will probably pick up the debt of rent arrears. PMQ clip of Ian Murray – will the PM personally benefit from millionaires tax cut?  NHS Chief Executive Sir David Nicholson is determined to rub the public’s noses in his invincibility and contempt for his critics according to the Daily Mail. He says he wants to support whistleblowers but his new deputy, Dame Barbara Hakin stands accused of helping to authorise £500,000 to silence a hospital chief executive who was sacked after warning that targets were threatening lives. Councillors for hire who give firms planning advice One Tory councillor in East Devon, Graham Brown, boasted: “If I can’t get planning, nobody will.” The councillor claimed he preferred to keep a low profile, but had “access to all the right people for the right clients”. He added: “[I] don’t come cheap. I mean, there are jobs that I do for £1,000, and there are jobs that I do for £20,000 … if I turn a greenfield into a housing estate and I’m earning the developer two or three million, then I ain’t doing it for peanuts.” The Daily Telegraph’s investigation also looked at the activities of Indigo Public Affairs, a lobbying company. In Newcastle, Greg Stone, a Liberal Democrat councillor who works for the firm, boasted that the company had “a good chance that via our network someone will know someone who knows somebody” at every council. “Tricks of the trade” used to gain approval for developments included making sure planning committees included “friendly faces”, he said. New head of legal services at Bristol City Council Liam Nevin spent more than 23,000 of taxpayers’ money on an attempt to ban the press from reporting details of a controversial fostering case. New Pope, a German Jesuit from Argentina. The Archbishop and the oil sharks: A ‘slick’ young Justin Welby, Elf Oil the crooked ‘Monsieur Africa’ and a £6bn mission to snap Nigeria’s oil riches – with catastrophic results.
[audio: 201303151700]
download podcast links temporarlily removed from BCfm website due to music copyright

Second hour: Kevin Phillips, chair of the Avon and Somerset Police Federation, discusses the recent vote on whether police would strike or not. Vote was 69% locally & 81% nationally in favour of the right to strike. Drusilla Sharpling, from HMIC, says police appeared to be reluctant to investigate Savile because of his high public profile in this week’s report. The Jimmy Savile case, phone hacking, Hillsborough, the police are discrediting themselves. Why aren’t fraudulent bankers & traders being arrested, in Iran fraudsters are being executed Low morale in the police. Round up of international news with Martin Summers: As the smoke clears after Saudi Arabia’s latest mass execution by firing squad… Charles and Camilla fly in. The Prince isn’t expected to raise the issue of human rights with his hosts. Perhaps he should. Queen’s Sri Lanka visit for Commonwealth CHOG meeting ‘grotesque’. Disaster in Syria as Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov flies into London to talk to Foreign Secretary William Hague, believes UK will break international law if we supply weapons to non-governmental actors, or terrorists, in Syria, particularly embarrassing because they kidnapped UN peacekeepers in the Golan Heights, Syrian army seem to be winning the ‘civil war’. 9/11 ‘mastermind’ living in posh Bristol City Centre flat? Correction. No, his flat is, in fact, in London. Security records of cars passing through a checkpoint at the Prestancia gated community indicated that Mr Abdulaziz al-Hijji and his wife Anoud’s home, 4224 Escondito Circle, Prestancia, Sarasota, Florida, had been visited a number of times by Mohamed Atta, the leader of the 19-strong hijack team, who piloted American Airlines Flight 11 into the North Tower of the World Trade Centre in 2001. The logs also indicated that Marwan Al-Shehhi, who crashed United Airlines Flight 175 into the South Tower, and Ziad Jarrah, who was at the controls of United Airlines Flight 93 when it crashed in a field in Pennsylvania, had visited the house. A decade after the world’s worst terrorist attack, which claimed the lives of 3,000 people, Mr al-Hijji is resident in London, working for the European subsidiary of Saudi Aramco, Saudi Arabia’s state oil company. Described as a career counsellor, he is based in the offices of Aramco Overseas Company UK Limited. Israeli president Shimon Peres comes to the EU to try to persuade them to ban Hezbollah as a terrorist organisation. Royal visits to two regimes of the worst abusers of human rights in the world. The death, possibly by CIA poisoning, of Hugo Chavez, land reform and fantastic results of his government for general health and wellbeing. Mike Birkin from Friends of the Earth discusses EDF Energy pulling out of a court case where they were attempting to sue protesters. Sustainable energy and the Energy Bill. Japan betrayed to help US fight Russia at the end of World War Two: 1992 BBC Horizon documentary ‘Hitler’s Bomb’ & Carter Hydrick’s book Critical Mass, about the 1945 US/Nazi Uranium & Plutonium deal
[audio: 201303151800]
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