This Cable longread – on co-design, a participatory approach to designing solutions – was first published in October 2022, and followed up on proposals that Bristol City Council had been considering around demolishing and rebuilding some of its estates. The council has so far not pursued these plans. But in light of the Barton House tower block evacuation in November 2023, the condition of Bristol’s social housing and the ways in which public bodies communicate with residents have remained big i...
Mar 22, 2024•21 min•Season 1Ep. 4
Listen: The Debrief, digging deeper into revelations of institutional racism at a local NHS trust Priyanka Raval discusses the inside story of her recent investigation into racism in health services, and what it says about the state of the NHS, with Cable colleague Matty Edwards It was 23 June 2023 when the Cable journalist Priyanka Raval received a tip-off from a source asking to discuss institutional racism at a local NHS trust. That very day, an internal report published by the same organisat...
Mar 15, 2024•29 min•Season 1Ep. 3
Over just 18 days at the end of January and the start of February, three Bristol teenagers lost their lives. Knife crime is a national issue that’s as complex as it is devastating, and it doesn’t exist in isolation. It’s set in a wider social context where housing, school exclusion, unemployment, mental health, and government cuts can be issues at play. As part of Together for Change , a city-wide campaign with community leaders, campaigners, and the city’s media, the Cable will explore the soci...
Mar 08, 2024•20 min•Season 1Ep. 2
This investigation, months in the making, reveals racism in Bristol hospitals.Our journalist Priyanka Raval was contacted by whistleblowers from local NHS trust University Hospitals Bristol and Weston (UHBW), many of whom have been recruited by the NHS from overseas to deal with the UK's chronic staffing shortages. The Cable has been investigating claims of institutional racism at the trust, after 10 whistleblowers came forward to share their stories, including seven who have now left as a resul...
Mar 01, 2024•24 min•Season 1Ep. 3
On 15 May 2022, a group of Palestine Action protesters, two of them dissident Israeli citizens, smashed their way into the Bristol headquarters of Elbit Systems UK, a subsidiary of Israel’s largest arms manufacturer. The date of the action is significant – it marked the anniversary of the Nakba , Arabic for ‘catastrophe’, when the mass displacement of Palestinians began in 1948.The seven Palestine Action activists used sledgehammers to break into the Elbit Systems building, before barricading th...
Feb 23, 2024•32 min•Season 1Ep. 1
Kingswood is about to undergo radical makeover, at least politically. The Bristol-South Gloucestershire border town’s voters will at this year’s general election find themselves going to the polls in one of four new constituencies – with their current one set to disappear altogether under boundary changes being made to the political map of the UK. The area’s local MP, Tory minister Chris Skidmore, has also disappeared – he stepped down over the government’s climate plan – triggering a by-electio...
Feb 13, 2024•17 min•Season 1Ep. 2
Salma, a lawyer who spent her childhood in Gaza, shares the 'dystopian' experience of life under occupation and knowing your family are in a war zone, as well as discussing happier memories and pro-Palestinian activism in the UK. Content warning: contains graphic descriptions of war and violence Salma Hajjar is a young trainee solicitor who spent her childhood up to age eight in Gaza, where decades of oppression and violence have been succeeded by a return to the horrors of all-out war. In the l...
Feb 09, 2024•1 hr 2 min•Season 11Ep. 6
Join the renowned writer, broadcaster and academic for a powerful talk exploring his childhood and journalism career, and how his experiences have shaped his work. Gary Younge is a renowned, award-winning journalist, author and broadcaster, and now a professor of sociology at the University of Manchester. In the latest episode of our new Cable Live podcast strand – where we sit down with writers, academics and activists from across the UK, putting the Cable’s work in the national conversation – ...
Feb 02, 2024•1 hr 12 min•Season 1Ep. 4
Inside Bristol’s ‘murder factory’ arms facility, with the activists on trial for occupying it Stavit Sinai opens her phone to find she’s been added to a group on encrypted messaging app Signal. The 38-year-old, a philosophy teacher at a community college in Berlin, has been asked to take part in a direct-action protest at the Bristol headquarters of Elbit Systems UK, an arms company that ships weapons to Israel. Among the names of those added to the group chat, she recognises her comrade Ronnie ...
Jan 26, 2024•21 min•Season 1Ep. 2
Neil chats to Ruth, a daughter of the Windrush generation, on her decades of work with Bristol's voluntary and community groups, how that's changed as public services have been cut – and whether she feels conflicted about receiving an honour associated with empire Ruth Pitter has been a stalwart of Bristol’s voluntary sector for decades – and in January 2024 was awarded an MBE as part of the New Year’s honours list for ‘services to equality, charity and community’ in the city. This has included ...
Jan 19, 2024•1 hr 1 min•Season 11Ep. 5
Shon Faye is a writer and presenter, and the author of the award-winning Sunday Times bestseller The Transgender Issue , which was first published in 2021 and has since been republished in multiple languages. She also hosted the critically acclaimed LGBTQ+ history podcast, Call Me Mother. Shon is currently working on her second book, has been a co-presenter on Novara Media’s news programme and writes an advice column at US Vogue. In the latest episode of our new Cable Live podcast strand – where...
Jan 12, 2024•1 hr 17 min•Season 1Ep. 3
Bristol Unpacked with BBC journalist Lucy Proctor on mad cows, Covid and conspiracy theories Thirty years ago, BSE was spreading across the UK while the government insisted beef was safe. Neil asks Lucy, producer of The Cows are Mad podcast, about the scandal – and how conspiracy theories have thrived as trust in the establishment has nosedived. Over the past few years, BBC podcast producer Lucy Proctor has built a reputation for shining a much broader and more searching beam into the world of c...
Jan 05, 2024•1 hr 2 min•Season 11Ep. 4
When a millionaire, yacht-owning rogue landlord evicted the owners of a well-loved St Pauls cafe, it sparked protests. And now, two years on, a clearer picture of the messy situation has emerged… Hidden Corner was a popular cafe and bookshop in Portland Square, St Pauls. So when its owners were turfed out, its doors bolted shut with heavy chains by the building’s landlord – millionaire businessman Thomas Flight, now notorious for the dodgy ways he dealt with his tenants – there was an uproar. Bu...
Dec 21, 2023•25 min•Season 1Ep. 1
Listen: Bristol Unpacked with Watershed CEO Clare Reddington on cinema, class and council cuts As Bristol City Council slashes spending on venues including arthouse cinema Watershed, Neil asks its boss Clare why funding the arts matters, and whether the sector's reputation as catering mainly to the well-heeled is justified. Over the past year Clare Reddington, the chief executive of Bristol's flagship arthouse cinema Watershed, has not been shy about fighting her corner in the midst of a tough f...
Dec 15, 2023•55 min•Season 11Ep. 3
In the last few months, Wesley Bear has been at the forefront of actions by ACORN. That's the community union known nationally for taking direct action to stand up for tenants' rights, which originated in Bristol almost a decade ago. On 17 November Wesley, ACORN's communications officer, was involved in an altercation with security guards at the Holiday Inn in Bristol city centre. Residents of the Barton House tower block evacuated that week have been temporarily housed in the hotel – in conditi...
Dec 08, 2023•52 min•Season 11Ep. 2
Moya Lothian-Maclean is a contributing editor at Novara Media and presenter of the Human Resources podcast, which explores British involvement in the transatlantic slave trade and how it touches every part of the nation. She’s a regular on TV and radio, and writes about society, politics and culture for publications including gal-dem, the New York Times, the Guardian and the I. In this episode of our new Cable Live podcast series – where we sit down with writers, academics and activists from acr...
Nov 30, 2023•50 min•Season 1Ep. 2
Peter Apps is a journalist at the specialist magazine Inside Housing, and author of the Orwell Prize -winning book, Show Me the Bodies: How We Let Grenfell Happen . In the first episode of our new Cable Live podcast strand – where we sit down with writers, academics and activists from across the UK, putting the Cable’s work in the national conversation – he is in conversation with Ruth Day, a Bristol-based housing activist and campaigner. As part of the Cable's ongoing speaker series, Peter is t...
Nov 24, 2023•52 min•Season 1Ep. 1
Content warning: audio contains graphic discussions of violence Eight years ago, filmmaker Aodh Breathnach was stabbed multiple times during a night out on Stokes Croft, and rushed in a taxi to the Bristol Royal Infirmary. Aodh was lucky. He recovered from injuries to his head and body within a few weeks and tried to put the attack out of his mind, deleting photos from his phone and throwing away the clothes he had been wearing. But the mental scars the stabbing inflicted proved far more resista...
Nov 16, 2023•59 min•Season 11Ep. 1
The Cable has been speaking to residents of east Bristol on the eve of the city's first so-called 'liveable neighbourhood' coming into effect. The trial scheme will stop cars driving through the area along certain roads in an attempt to reduce air pollution, and make the area of narrow residential streets safer for walking and cycling. Similar schemes have been brought in up and down the country, but they have also sparked a backlash as part of a so-called ‘war on motorists’, a narrative now bei...
Nov 10, 2023•34 min•Season 1Ep. 1
