Tag Archives: podcasts

Heartbreak, humility and humour – Alex Cole-Hamilton talks to Matt Forde

A wee treat for your commute today, or to have on in the background while you work from home.

New Scottish Lib Dem leader Alex Cole-Hamilton was the guest on this week’s Political Party podcast hosted by Matt Forde.

It’s a brilliant chat, incredibly serious and moving in places, absolutely hilarious in others. At the start, Matt Forde warns us that it includes Alex’s account of a man who died by suicide in front of him a few years back. It’s one of the reasons he has been so persistent in questioning the Scottish Government on their lack of a suicide prevention strategy or lack of mental health support.

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Nick Clegg’s podcast interview with George Osborne didn’t help me manage my anger

I used a car journey yesterday to listen to Nick Clegg’s podcast, Anger Management, yesterday. I was a bit perturbed that he’s only been talking to white men of a certain age so far, but am reassured that this is going to change soon, with Harriet Harman and Elif Safak coming up.

I decided that yesterday’s sunshine was too lovely to be spoiled by listening to the chat with Nigel Farage, so I listened to the Know your Frenemy chat with George Osborne instead.

I still have some time for the coalition and the things that the Liberal Democrats brought to the table that did make life better for people – better mental health care, shared parental leave, extra money for disadvantaged kids in school and the like, ending child detention for immigration, all the green stuff we did and our work on international development. I am also acutely aware of the mistakes that we made, particularly around immigration (the minimum income requirement to bring your non British spouse in for a start) and cutbacks in social security that caused real misery. Sometimes stopping the Tories doing their worst just wasn’t enough.

So the conversation between Nick and George, a reuniting of half The Quad who made all the decisions during the coalition years, was peppered with several instances of Nick telling George how much he’d infuriated him. Hearing about Osborne’s upbringing was interesting, with his Labour voting mum and Conservative inclined father.

They had an interesting conversation about the media with Osborne, the newspaper editor, speaking up for newspapers and for regulation of  social media. 

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged and | 42 Comments

Talking Bournemouth and Brexit with Sam Skubala on the Politics World podcast

Have a listen to my chat with Sam Skubala when we talked about Bournemouth, Brexit, Vince and Jo. And about reducing inequality.

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A personal guide to the 13 most essential political podcasts

podcastsCommuting is a major part of my daily life, so I find podcasts are an essential way to make use of time I’d otherwise spend staring vacantly out the window or idly refreshing and re-refreshing Twitter. Here, in order of where they appear in my iTunes directory, are the podcasts I listen to most frequently…

The Economist’s podcasts – a good mix of audio recordings of selected articles from the print edition together with brief discussions involving the Economist’s expert correspondents. Slightly irritatingly the sound can vary between recordings, so you …

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I get “spiky” on For A’ That podcast

On Saturday I took part in the For A’ That podcast in Scotland along with regulars Andrew Tickell and Michael Greenwell and fellow guest Green (and former Liberal Democrat) Douglas McLellan. It’s not all about Scottish stuff. We had quite a long conversation at the beginning about immigration and Nick Clegg’s speech in particular.

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