40 years since Band Aid - the lyrics and attitudes have dated badly, but the problem is still there. Africa remains desperate and underdeveloped and the only part of the world regularly threatened by famine, civil war and military coups d’etat. Why is this continent not thriving despite its vast natural resources and talent? Why do so many of its best and brightest choose to emigrate? Phil and Roger explore the question of Africa’s failure to move to the levels of development and wealth seen in ...
Dec 05, 2024•42 min•Season 1Ep. 131
Who’d be a farmer? You have tiny profit margins. You’re held to high environmental and welfare standards against cheaper less-scrupulous foreign imports, and now you’re facing unaffordable inheritance taxes….. Is it worth working the soil in modern Britain? Is the job more custodianship of the land than running a profitable business? Peter Gittins is a lecturer at Leeds University Business School, and he help run his family-owned livestock farm in West Yorkshire - he gives Phil and Roger a pictu...
Nov 28, 2024•36 min•Season 1Ep. 130
Should we be allowed to take our own lives? Should doctors or friends be allowed to help us? For the first time in a decade, MPs have a bill to consider on assisted dying. Parliament and the cabinet is split, and there are vigorous campaigns on both sides. Will it open the door to euthanasia for convenience, with old people and the disabled pressured not to be a burden? Or is it a measure of compassion for the suffering and the desperate? Phil and Roger talk through the new bill and its limitati...
Nov 21, 2024•36 min•Season 1Ep. 129
How ready are we for the results of climate change? While leaders talk at COP29 about lessening global warming, some of the extreme weather predicted by scientists is already here. The hundreds dead in the Valencia floods suggest governments need to do more to keep us safe. Do we need to build differently, or live in more secure places? Can we be adequately protected from the increasing numbers of wildfires or hurricanes? Phil and Roger get the latest research from Ilan Kelman, Professor of Disa...
Nov 14, 2024•35 min•Season 1Ep. 128
The Donald is back. Another Trump presidency - with a Republican-dominated congress. So how will a world that looks back on 2016-2020 and shudders, deal with a volatile, unpredictable narcissist, who is now also convicted felon, in the White House? What will it mean for Ukraine, for Gaza, for China, for Europe? Paul Whiteley, Emeritus Professor of Government at the University of Essex, walks Phil and Roger through the likely challenges of Trump 2.0 for a world he says is now in a much more dange...
Nov 07, 2024•43 min•Season 1Ep. 127
Just days from one of the most divisive and consequential elections in US history, what are the chances of a second Trump presidency, or the first woman being installed in the White House? And how true are the alarming predictions of what it might mean for America and for the world? Dr Thomas Gift, Associate Professor of Political Science at UCL and founding director of its Centre on American Politics, tells Phil and Roger the vote is too close to call, with unpredictable changes of allegiance f...
Oct 31, 2024•37 min•Season 1Ep. 126
Hard times and hard choices, but the Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, seems determined to inflict pain on consumers, taxpayers and businesses in the short term, to plug what she says is a £40bn hole in the nation's finances. But does she need to? And is she going to hit the right targets, given that she has boxed herself in by committing not to raise income tax, VAT or National Insurance on employees? And is recalculating national debt by taking into account assets a sensible way of allowing her to bo...
Oct 24, 2024•40 min•Season 1Ep. 125
Why do so many of us opt to go under the knife to change our appearance? Cosmetic surgery is having a boom, with injections as well as scalpels and offering cheaper and barely-regulated treatments. It can be dangerous as well as pricey, and often ineffective, so why do it? Is it down to a distorted perception of beauty, conditioned by social media and reality TV? Does it need more regulation, as well as a push to ease social pressures? Phil and Roger ask Ruth Holliday, Professor of Gender and Cu...
Oct 17, 2024•37 min•Season 1Ep. 124
A year after October 7 and the landscape shaped over decades is irrevocably changed - Palestinians and Israelis killed in unprecedented numbers, Hezbollah and Hamas decapitated, Iran humiliated. And no end in sight to the bloodshed and destruction. So where have the pieces fallen? What chance of any kind of ceasefire on any front?What hope for the remaining Israeli hostages? Will things change further after the election hiatus in the US - Israel's biggest backer? Can Prime Minister Netanyahu cli...
Oct 10, 2024•40 min•Season 1Ep. 123
The Tory ship seems rudderless, and the vote for a new captain less than enthralling. After their underwhelming Birmingham conference, what hope is there for the Conservatives - hitherto the most successful political organisation in Europe? With the fewest MPs in its history, and missing many of the former big beasts of Toryism, does the party’s salvation lie in lurching further to the right to win back supporters from Reform? Or is the safe ground in the centre where the Lib Dems have drained t...
Oct 03, 2024•35 min•Season 1Ep. 122
The Labour Party in government for the first time in 14 years, but this week’s party conference seemed an exercise in damage control rather than celebration - delegates voting against the cabinet on winter fuel payments, and cabinet ministers having to announce they won’t accept any more free clothes or glasses. How did the honeymoon end so soon? Or is the scale of the problems they have inherited so daunting it requires harsh medicine that will never make them popular? With such a huge parliame...
Sep 26, 2024•40 min•Season 1Ep. 121
Are we all failing to become adults? Does the world treat us as if we need to be told to carry a water bottle on a train, or hold onto a handrail, or that a bag of nuts may contain…. nuts? The way our politics and culture like simple messages and avoid challenge or risk or complexity suggests to some that we are becoming an infantile society, incapable of understanding nuance or facing the world of adults. Phil and Roger talk about all this with Keith Hayward, Professor of Criminology at the Uni...
Sep 19, 2024•42 min•Season 1Ep. 120
X banned in Brazil. The boss of Telegram detained in France. Is state power finally moving to curb the big social media sites? There’s been a lot of talk about reining-in X, TikTok, Instagram, Snap and the rest, but have governments now decided make the sites accountable for the harm they cause - misinformation, child abuse and societal division? Or are the Elon Musks still beyond control and regulation? Robin Mansell, Professor of New Media and the Internet at the London School of Economics, te...
Sep 12, 2024•44 min•Season 1Ep. 119
Keir Starmer is pushing for a reset of relations with the European Union, but has ruled out rejoining in his lifetime. So how close can or should the UK get? How welcome is Britain in Brussels after all the Brexit grief? And does the changing tone of public opinion here mean he can easily get past the toxicity of Brexit for both the Labour Party and the country? David Henig, Director of the UK Trade Project at the European Centre For International Political Economy, tells Phil and Roger how the ...
Sep 05, 2024•40 min•Season 1Ep. 118
Interest rates, inflation, monetary control. What is it that central bankers actually do - and are they the right people to be doing it? The last decades have seen huge turbulence in the global economy - the Great Recession, then post-Covid inflation, so is the system working? Is it right that a political decision - balancing price-rises against the cost of borrowing - should be in the hands of unelected bankers? Dominic Caddick of the New Economics Foundation takes Phil and Roger through what t...
Aug 29, 2024•36 min•Season 1Ep. 117
Happy days are here again for the Democrats, as their new candidates gear up for the US presidential election. But does the razzmatazz conceal a weakness on the ticket that will be exposed once Harris and Walz have to face hostile interviewers? Dr Thomas Gift, Associate Professor of Political Science at UCL and founding director of the Centre on US Politics tells Phil and Roger why he still thinks there could still be a Trump victory in November. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more i...
Aug 22, 2024•39 min•Season 1Ep. 116
Riots and disorder on a scale Britain hadn’t seen in a decade, but then the streets re-taken by anti-racist crowds - what to make of what happened after the Southport stabbings? Keir Starmer said the white men throwing rocks and setting fire to hotels were “far right”. Was he correct? And what does “far right” mean? Is it a coherent political force in the UK, or just a bunch of drunken yobs? Phil and Roger look at the evidence with Aurelien Mondon of Bath University and the Reactionary Politics ...
Aug 15, 2024•39 min•Season 1Ep. 115
As students get ready to see if their A levels match up to their offers, how sure can they be the universities will still be there to award their eventual degrees? Higher education is in something of a financial crisis - not enough money from fees, not enough foreign students to make up the shortfall, and the best academics heading abroad for higher pay. Is the whole model of young people building up huge debts for sometimes questionable courses sustainable? Will some universities have to close ...
Aug 08, 2024•38 min•Season 1Ep. 114
Paris, after a damp start, is sprinting through the games - but at what cost? Closed bars and cafes behind security barriers, fewer visitors in the run-up to the Olympics, and a massive bill for all the building-work and administration. The money from the tickets and broadcast rights goes to the International Olympic Committee, so will the city benefit at all? Many venues are turning down the chance of staging big sports events like this because the costs - social as well as financial - outweigh...
Aug 01, 2024•39 min•Season 1Ep. 113
The US presidential election has been upended by the replacement of one candidate, and the attempted assassination of the other. Can Karmala Harris unite the Democrats and compete effectively with Donald Trump? Has a near-death experience changed The Donald, or just made more of his supporters sure he is God’s chosen leader? And why did Joe Biden wait so long to acknowledge his obvious incapacity? Phil and Roger get the picture from Dr Thomas Gift , Associate Professor in Political Science at Un...
Jul 25, 2024•36 min•Season 1Ep. 112
As the new Labour government pushes to get the UK economy growing, is it time we became a big manufacturer once again? For decades the driver of the economy has been services, but is that too difficult to sustain? Should we go back to making stuff - this time microprocessors, software, AI programs? Ali Bigdeli, Professor of Industrial Service Innovation at Aston University tells Roger and Phil what the shape of the new economy could be. It's all to do with servitisation apparently. Hosted on Aca...
Jul 18, 2024•37 min•Season 1Ep. 111
We all need a holiday right now, somewhere drier and hotter than Britain. But do our favourite resorts want US? Protesters fire water pistols at visitors in Barcelona, thousands turn out in Tenerife to tell holidaymakers to go home. Tourists, they say, force up prices, clog the streets and destroy the very thing they have come for - beauty, tranquility and local culture. Are we all too addicted to travelling too often and in the wrong way? Phil and Roger ask Marina Novelli, Professor of Marketin...
Jul 11, 2024•34 min•Season 1Ep. 110
What's the point in voting? The answer, if you're not in a seat where there's a chance your candidate will come first or second, is not much. The first-past-the-post system means many, or even most of us, are effectively disenfranchised at each general election. So is there a better, fairer way to run our polling? A proportional system, perhaps? Or is there a risk that that would mean no clear outcome and we will have constant unstable coalition governments? Dr Heinz Brandenberg, senior lecturer...
Jul 04, 2024•41 min•Season 1Ep. 109
Just a week to go before a voting day that’s likely to lead to a radical change in the UK’s political landscape. But what have we learnt about the parties and the personalities that will dominate the new politics, after a parliamentary clean-out of the old team? Will Labour have to cut back even its modest ambitions in the face of economic reality? Will the Conservatives suffer a reversal, or a full-on existential catastrophe? Rob Ford, Professor of Politics at the University of Manchester, and ...
Jun 27, 2024•39 min•Season 1Ep. 108
With Labour almost certain to take the reins of power on July 5th, almost none of the incoming ministers have ever run anything bigger than a church fete. Right away they will have to take over billion-pound budgets and huge departments. Is it ridiculous to put gifted but untrained amateurs in charge of the world’s sixth-largest economy? Sir Geoff Mulgan thinks there should be tuition in how to govern for all politicians. The former Blair adviser - now professor of Collective Intelligence, Publi...
Jun 20, 2024•37 min•Season 1Ep. 107
TV debates, TikTok stunts, falling off a paddleboard - does any of it influence how people vote? What works in an election campaign? Does ANYONE read a manifesto? How can politicians connect effectively with the public? Or has everyone already made up their minds? Dr Matt Walsh, head of the School of Journalism, Media and Culture at the University of Cardiff, tells Phil and Roger what, if anything, actually moves the dial. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information....
Jun 13, 2024•39 min•Season 1Ep. 106
Promises galore - more doctors’ surgeries, pension triple-lock plus, free social care, a boost in the size of the army - but how much of any of this can we afford, whoever gets into Number 10 on July 5th? The huge public debt, lack of investment and productivity, and politicians refusal to countenance tax increases all point to sums that don’t add up. Dr Michael Nower of Durham University takes Phil and Roger through the harsh realities behind the campaign rhetoric in the UK’s 2024 election. Hos...
Jun 06, 2024•39 min•Season 1Ep. 105
Are leaders ever held to account for starting wars or killing civilians. The International Criminal Court has already issued an arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin, and one is in prospect for Israel’s prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu. Is it right to try to prosecute the leader of a democracy with a functional justice system of its own? Does a court that has mainly jailed African dictators over the last 20 years but ignored the actions of great powers, have any credibility? Dr Clare Frances Moran...
May 30, 2024•30 min•Season 1Ep. 104
The new Russian offensive towards Kharkiv suggests Moscow has seized the initiative in the two-year conflict. With not enough ammunition or soldiers, can Kyiv hold the line? Is the support from the EU, NATO and the US going to last — especially if Donald Trump returns to the White House in January? But also can Vladimir Putin’s war economy in Russia be sustained long enough to gain him eventual victory? Phil and Roger get a perspective on the course of Europe’s longest war since 1945 from Christ...
May 23, 2024•34 min•Season 1Ep. 103
With almost everyone under 30 on TikTok or Instagram, and claims of rampant bullying, sexploitation and pornography - is there any way to protect young people from the harmful effects? The social media giants wring their hands but do nothing. Governments launch inquiries and claim they’re doing something, but the awful stories keep piling up. Could there be effective regulation? Should we even try? Dr Emily Setty of the University of Surrey tells Phil and Roger - equipping young people to deal w...
May 16, 2024•42 min•Season 1Ep. 102
