10th January 2014

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

First Hour: News review with Rob Telford, Green councillor for Ashley ward. Council meetings, Mayor Ferguson’s £90m budget cuts over three years, £7m found so less cuts needed, now £83m. St. Pauls Learning Centre, Lynton Crosby, political party donors, and the media, included in introduction discussion. Mark Duggan’s inquest, death of Ian Tomlinson and corrupt police never being brought to justice; police cuts and some having to go by bus; If the police are waiting at the bus stop, having arrested someone, should they go upstairs, should they go downstairs or should they not arrest at all? £1.8bn cuts to social care – is care not valued in society? Lack of social care beds exacerbating crisis overloading A&E departments; Mayor George Ferguson and the Bristol budget consultation period; cuts to the Environment Agency, the floods, energy companies and electricity failures over Christmas; four American states have water which has been polluted from fracking, which pumps heavy metals and poisonous chemicals deep into the earth to extract shale oil and gas – desperate 1944 Nazi fracking in Hechingen, Germany at the end of the Second World War when Hitler was desperate for oil; Prisoners’ lawyer Iqbal Singh Kang, a lawyer with Gurney Harden Solicitors, explains riots in the private G4S run Oakwood ‘Titan jail’ near Birmingham where many prisoners local to Bristol have been transferred, meaning long journeys for local families of loved ones in jail.
programme page http://radio4all.net/index.php/program/73697

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‘In the third week of November 1944 reconnaissance showed that several sites of feverish activity had suddenly appeared near Hechingen. We could not at first make sense of them, but such activity in any event needed to be taken seriously, and the proximity to Hechingen made us wonder whether we had at last found evidence of a frantic effort by the Germans to make a last minute attempt at a nuclear bomb. I showed the photographs to F.A. Lindemann, Lord Cherwell, on 23rd November, who immediately warned Winston Churchill, and plans were made for further reconnaissance, and for bombing. I began to feel that nuclear intelligence had really ‘taken off’.
Within a few days though, the scare was dispelled. Wing Commander Douglas Kendall had spotted that all the sites were in the same string of valleys, and were on much the same level. After a visit to the Geological Museum in South Kensington, he found that a German geologist had reported low-grade oil shales in the area, and it turned out that all the Germans were doing now that their oil installations were being heavily attacked, was to try to exploit this unpromising source of supply.’
Most Secret War, Chapter 48, Nuclear Energy; p. 601, British Scientific Intelligence 1939-1945 by R. V. Jones, Hamish Hamilton 1978, Coronet 1979, ISBN 0 340 24169 1
Made into a BBC Series ‘The Secret War ‘

Second Hour: Round up of international news stories with Martin Summers: Fallujah (Iraq), Syria, Al Qaeda, ‘Doctors without Borders’ kidnappings, ‘Islamic State Of Iraq And The Levant’ (ISIL) or Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), Sunni and Shia Muslims. World War One is discussed as this year is the 100th anniversary: Tory Education Secretary Michael Gove and Boris Johnson defending WWI as a ‘Noble cause’; Guardian columnist Seumus Milne’s article: First world war: an imperial bloodbath that’s a warning, not a noble cause. the British and French carving up the Middle East – Is this World War Three? A row has erupted between Sir Tony Robinson and Michael Gove after the education secretary said programmes like Blackadder were being used to feed “myths” about World War One. Richard Attenborough’s 1969 film: Oh! What A Lovely War (A movie about the First World War based on a stage musical of the same name, portraying the “Game of War” and focusing on the members of one royal family that start it all and a poor family who go off to war. Much action revolves around the words and music of hymns and songs of the soldiers. Infamous incidents of the war are portrayed, including the assassination of Duke Ferdinand, the Christmas 1914 truce between British and German soldiers in no-mans-land, and the wiping out by their own side of a force of Irish soldiers newly arrived at the front.) and Miranda Carter’s book ‘George, Nicholas, and Wilhelm – Three Royal Cousins On The Road To World War 1’ The Three Emperors: Three Cousins, Three Empires and the Road to World War One Tory Chancellor George Osbourne and his 2014 economy speech on Monday: is this a 2015 election speech for activists and funders? The national debt is so big cuts are going to hardly make a difference; bankers, Quantitative Easing (QE) or Printing Money, personal debt, asset prices, and rich people running off with all the money like bandits; Tony Blair’s profits boosted by £13 in ‘bumper year’ 2013 so was he promised riches to start an illegal war etc. while he was Prime Minister? Welfare cuts – economic illiteracy. US journalist Edwin Black’s book: IBM and the Holocaust which explains mass survillance by the Nazis and how they were helped by greedy US corporation IBM and their Hollerith machines, leased via Switzerland.
programme page http://radio4all.net/index.php/program/73698

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