Byline Times Podcast

Former "Observer" Editor in Chief Will Hutton talks to Adrian Goldberg about his new book "This Time No Mistakes - How To Remake Britain" (Bloomsbury) which calls for an alliance on the progressive left. Produced in Birmingham by Adrian Goldberg and Harvey White.   Funded by subscriptions to the Byline Times.   Made by We Bring Audio for Byline Times. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for mor...

Adrian Goldberg hears from UK-based Jews saying “not in my name” in reaction to Israel’s attack on Gaza. This time – the Jews saying “not in my name” in reaction to Israel’s attack on Gaza. Emily Hilton is the UK Director of Diapora Alliance and co founder of Na'aamod: British Jews Against Occupation. Uri Agnon is an Israeli theatre maker and activist, originally from Jerusalem, now living in Lond...

New official figures have revealed record sewage spills in in England’s rivers and seas…3.6 million hours of waste dumped in 2023 compared to 1.75 million hours the year before.   Sewage works are sometimes overloaded during heavy downpours meaning waste sometimes legally flows out untreated but these occasions should be kept to a minimum.   This all begs questions about the regulation our privati...

New UK government figures have revealed the sharpest increase in absolute poverty in the UK for more than 30 years.   According to official statistics, 600,000 extra people came into this category last year. Rising energy prices following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine are partly to blame, but that doesn’t tell the whole story.   According to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation the trend has been getting...

Adrian Goldberg explores the wider meaning of 'tragedy chanting' aimed at supporters of Liverpool FC. He's joined by writer Tony Evans, who survived the the Hillsborough tragedy in 1989. Produced in Birmingham by Adrian Goldberg and Harvey White.   Funded by subscriptions to the Byline Times.   Made by We Bring Audio for Byline Times. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Le...

The apartment where Byline Times correspondent Zarina Zabrisky and war photographer Paul Conroy are living in Kherson has come under attack from Russian rockets. Adrian Goldberg gets their responses to a lucky miss. There's also an update on Odessa from Zarina while Paul assesses the state of international backing for Ukraine.  Produced in Birmingham by Adrian Goldberg and Harvey White.   Funded b...

Adrian Goldberg interviews Grace Blakeley about her new book 'Vulture Capitalism: Corporate Crimes, Backdoor Bailouts and the Death of Freedom". (Bloomsbury)  Produced in Birmingham by Adrian Goldberg and Harvey White.   Funded by subscriptions to the Byline Times.   Made by We Bring Audio for Byline Times. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choic...

Steve Bannon – former Chief strategist to Donald Trump - recently shared a platform with Liz Truss in which he called Tommy Robinson a 'hero'. Truss appeared to agree.   This was at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Maryland and in an article you can read now at Byline Times.com Byline Times executive editor Peter Jukes has sounded a warning about the emergence of a darker, dangerous...

New findings from a team at Oxford University suggest that privatisation bad for your health.     Researchers looked at 13 long-term studies from well-off countries including the UK to examine what happened ‘before’ and ‘after’ public health provision was outsourced.    Their conclusion: Increases in privatisation generally corresponded with worse quality of care.   Adrian Goldberg talks to one of...

George Galloway has won victory in the traditionally safe Labour seat of Rochdale by election, after standing on a platform opposing Keir Starmer's stance on Gaza.  Does Gallwoway’s victory - as he suggests - reflect a shift in the tectonic plates of British politics? Or is it just a one off caused in part at least by Labour decision to disown its own candidate Azhar Ali after made anti semitic re...

Has Islamophobia been mainstreamed? It certainly looks like it. Former Home Secretary Suella Braverman recently wrote in the Telegraph that Islamists are “bullying Britain into submission", while ex Tory party Chairman Lee Anderson told GB News that Islamists had "got control" of London Mayor Sadiq Khan. Tory MP Paul Scully has also weighed in claimed that Tower Hamlets in London and Sparkhill in...

This is special episode to mark the second anniversary of invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Russia had already annexed Crimea in 2014, and separatists backed by Moscow also sparked fighting in Ukraine’s Donbas region in the same year. The world mostly looked the other way, until Russia launched a full scale invasion of its neighbour two years ago on the false pretext that it was seeking to deNazify Ukr...

Tens of thousands of Palestinians – many of them non combatants - have been killed since October 7th when Hamas launched a series of co-ordinated incursions into Israel. 1200 Israelis – most of them civilians - were slaughtered - and more than 100 hostages taken at the time are still in captivity. Israel’s response – designed it says to free the hostages and destroy Hamas – has led to the deaths o...

Are Citizens Assemblies the way to make up the so-called "democratic deficit" which leaves many people estranged from parliament? Sue Gray the former senior civil servant who reported on Partygate during Boris Johnson’s time as Prime Minister seems to think so. In her first interview as chief of staff to Keir Starmer, she revealed that plans are being drawn up to bypass Whitehall and involve the p...

As the Tories are trounced in two by elections is there any way back for Rishi Sunak? Labour overturned Peter Bone’s 18,000 majority in the Northamptonshire seat of Wellingborough – a “catastrophically bad” defeat according to Gavin Barwell, an ex Conservative MP and Theresa May’s former chief of staff. Labour also overcame an 11,000 majority in Kingswood in South Gloucesteshire. This is obviously...

Introducing Vote Watch, a new Byline Times campaign to ensure that the upcoming UK general election is both free and fair. We want to hold political parties of all stripes to account by making sure that rules around voting and donations are observed; and to identify those trying to unduly influence the outcome of the ballot, whether through bots on social media, artificial intelligence or supposed...

The two likeliest contenders to be the next UK Prime Minister have both come under pressure in recent days... PM Rishi Sunak mocked Kier Starmer's stance on trans women, even though the mother of murdered transgender teenager Brianna Ghey was in the Visitors Gallery of the House of Commons; meanwhile Starmer himself, the Leader of the Opposition, has been criticised for u-turning on Labour's Green...

Foreign secretary Lord Cameron has said rather than waiting for a successful outcome of peace talks in the Middle East the UK would consider the idea of Palestinian state during negotiations. It’s a subtle but important shift in emphasis in the government's position – the idea, said Cameron, is to give the Palestinian people “a political horizon”. In other words, a route to statehood a without hav...

Twenty five years after an amazing demonstration of people power in Birmingham which led to the cancellation of billions of dollars worth of debt in the developing world, Adrian Goldberg asks - is it time for a repeat performance? Adrian hears from Ruth Stephens who devised a Human Chain which attracted 70,000 participants at a G8 summit in 1998, attended by Tony Blair and President Clinton. Plus...

Byline Times political editor Adam Bienkov assesses how the two likeliest rivals to become PM are measuring up in the polls. Produced and presented in Birmingham by Adrian Goldberg.   Funded by subscriptions to the Byline Times.   Made by We Bring Audio for Byline Times. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Is Britain sliding to war in the Middle East?  The RAF has once again taken part in US led attacks on military sites in Yemen from where Houthi fighters have been targeting cargo vessels in the Red Sea - one of the world’s most important commercial shipping routes. This followed similar action on the 11 January. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak insists the UK’s military action amounts to nothing more th...

Is the NHS putting patients at risk by expanding the role of medical professionals who aren’t qualified as doctors?  Physician Associates have been around in the Health Service for a couple of decades now and there are plans to more than double their numbers in an attempt to plug gaps in the workforce. They don’t have a medical degrees and while they must complete a two year training course, there...

Adrian Goldberg interviews best selling author and LBC radio host James O'Brien about his latest book, 'How They Broke Britain'. Produced in Birmingham by Adrian Goldberg and Harvey White.   Funded by subscriptions to the Byline Times.   Made by We Bring Audio for Byline Times. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoic...

Adrian Goldberg gets a view from inside Gaza’s Al Aqsa Hospital which is caught in the crossfire of war. British surgeon Dr Nick Maynard has just returned to the UK after spending two weeks as clinical lead at the hospital for the charity Medical Aid for Palestinians. MAP is helping victims of Israel's bombardment of Gaza, which followed the massacre and hostage taking of Israelis by Hamas on Oct...

This time – shocking new evidence that austerity kills, featuring Professor Sir Michael Marmot, who leads the Institute for Health Equity at University College, London. Tough constraints on public spending were imposed by the coalition government in 2010 in the wake of the banking crisis, and continued for the rest of the decade. The IHE found that between 2011 and 2019 more than a million people...