The Bunker – Your daily news Deep Dive

When people end up in a job or position they love, was it because they worked hard in school, or did they just get lucky? Why is the idea of progressing on merit under threat? Is there a way we can modernise it for the 21st century? Should we we even try?

Adrian Wooldridge, Political Editor of the Economist and author of its Bagehot column, talks to Ros Taylor about his new book The Aristocracy of Talent: How Meritocracy Made the Modern World, why Britain is becoming less meritocratic… and how we can make meritocracy work in today’s world. 

• “While America claims to be the ultimate meritocracy, they are fascinated by our own aristocracy”
• “You need competent people to do the work of the world, and aristocrats are quite often born stupid and lazy”
• “The Davos class of people at the top are divorced from the rest of society, floating above our meritocratic mechanisms”

Presented by Ros Taylor. Produced by Andrew Harrison. Assistant producers Jelena Sofronijevic and Jacob Archbold. Music by Kenny Dickinson. Audio production by Alex Rees. THE BUNKER is a Podmasters Production

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As footballers take the knee and culture warriors try to whip up a minority to boo, and the Tokyo Olympics teeter on the edge of cancellation, should we just accept that sport has always been inherently political? Jules Boykoff, former footballer, politics lecturer at Pacific University in Oregon and author of four books on the history of the Olympics, talks to Alex Andreou about the politics of sport’s showpiece event, whether the Tokyo Games will happen… and if it’s right to contact out politics to inexperience sportspeople.

• “Rule 50 outlaws expressions of politics at the Olympics… it’s a rule rooted in both power and hypocrisy”
• “The IOC are totally happy to have a made-for-TV event with no fans, as long as money heads into their coffers”
• “In major sports leagues 45-60% of the revenues to go to the athletes. At the Olympics it’s just 4.1%”
• “I don’t believe that every athlete should be an activist… but when it comes to athlete activism, now is a really exciting time to be alive”
• “The Olympic Committee is a profit-gobbling cartel… and one of the least accountable sports bodies in the world.

Presented by Alex Andreou. Produced by Andrew Harrison. Assistant producers Jelena Sofronijevic and Jacob Archbold. Music by Kenny Dickinson. Audio production by Robin Leeburn. THE BUNKER is a Podmasters Production

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Repairing the damage of war and cementing peace is a huge challenge for countries and international organisations. So why are big players so bad at fixing the consequences of civil and national strife? Award-winning academic Séverine Autesserre has worked as a “peacebuilder” in Kosovo, Afghanistan and the DR Congo. She talks to Arthur Snell about her book The Frontlines of Peace, why the typical “trickle-down” approach to repairing war damage doesn’t work – and how lasting peace comes from thinking outside the box.

•  “Handshakes between presidents and abstract peace agreements make no difference on the ground.” 
• “I started reading my first book about the Balkans on my flight to Kosovo.” 
• “I was the outsider, so I was in charge.” 
• “I found pockets of peace in even the most violent places.” 
• “In post-conflict zones only 2.1% of aid goes to local organisations who know the area.” 

Presented by Arthur Snell. Produced by Andrew Harrison. Assistant producers Jelena Sofronijevic and Jacob Archbold. Music by Kenny Dickinson. Audio production by Alex Rees. THE BUNKER is a Podmasters Production

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A bonus Daily… The Met Police was “institutionally corrupt” and failed the family of Daniel Morgan, the private investigator killed with an axe outside a South London pub in 1987, an independent panel found today. In a follow-up to our podcast on the case from May, David Allen Green talks Alex Andreou through what the report means for the police force, Morgan’s family, and Priti Patel’s autocratic policies. 

• “The Met did everything it could to make this report as slow and as painful as possible for the panel.” 

• “The report mentions the word ’corruption’ over 700 times. It cannot be argued that this was one or two bad police officers.”

Presented by Alex Andreou. Produced by Andrew Harrison. Assistant producers Jelena Sofronijevic and Jacob Archbold. Music by Kenny Dickinson. Audio production by Robin Leeburn. THE BUNKER is a Podmasters Production

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Andrew Neil’s GB News launches in a blaze of technical problems. Is Britain really ready to watch Channel Brillo? Plus Northern Ireland and the Sausage Wars overshadow the G7, NHS Digital is about to sell your health data to private concerns… and how old does an offensive tweet have to be before we can write it off as “youthful indiscretion”?

• “Johnson having a good old row with the EU over the Great British Banger won’t do him any harm with the public at all.” – Ayesha Hazarika

• “Trolling just doesn't work when everyone agrees with you.” – Justin Quirk

• “Slag off Megan Markle, tick. Slag off BLM, tick. For something new, GB News is awfully predictable.” – Ayesha Hazarika

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Presented by Andrew Harrison with Ayesha Hazarika, Justin Quirk and Ahir Shah. Assistant producers: Jacob Archbold and Jelena Sofronijevic. Music by Kenny Dickinson. Audio production by Robin Leeburn. Produced by Andrew Harrison. The Bunker is a Podmasters Production

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Whatever the triumphalist G7 headlines, the “Sausage War” fiasco left Global Britain looking as shifty, isolated and untrustworthy as its Prime Minister. How will the intractable Northern Ireland Protocol issue shake out? Plus unlocking gets put back (to nobody’s surprise), birth pangs for new regimes in Israel and Northern Ireland, and what will Friday’s England-Scotland fixture in the Euros mean for both countries’ nationalist leaders? Alex Andreou lays it all out. 

• “The EU will create some sort of fudge on Northern Ireland where it gets 99% of what it wants. And Britain will claim that as a victory.”

• “The sceptics think that ‘learning to live with COVID’ means going back to exactly the way things were before. And it doesn’t.”

• “Football is the only occasion where it is universally okay to be nationalist.”

Presented and produced by Andrew Harrison. Assistant producers Jelena Sofronijevic and Jacob Archbold. Music by Kenny Dickinson. Audio production by Robin Leeburn. THE BUNKER is a Podmasters Production

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From public transport to plastic and even the vinyl in your record collection, petrochemicals don’t just pervade our daily life. They’ve shaped our national culture. James Marriott, co-author of Crude Britannia: How Oil Shaped a Nation, tells Alex Andreou about the pipelines, people, and pop culture behind Britain’s petro-obsession – and how it impacted politics from Benn to Blair to Brexit.

• “The UK oil industry was a kind of offshore colony in the North Sea.”

• “If we hadn't had the IMF crisis in the 1970s, we would have kept strong state control over oil.” 

• “As soon as Thatcher came in, the game was over and the oil companies won.”

• “£26 million in oil is being pumped from Aberdeen as we speak, but the tax income for the state is minimal.”

• “You see Nicola Sturgeon being photographed more in front of windfarms than oil distilleries.” 

Presented by Alex Andreou. Produced by Andrew Harrison. Assistant producers Jelena Sofronijevic and Jacob Archbold. Music by Kenny Dickinson. Audio production by Alex Rees. THE BUNKER is a Podmasters Production

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The European Championships begin this week against a backdrop of more political turmoil than the game has seen in years, from taking the knee to fans booing England’s own black players to the reverberations of the Super League. Clive Tyldesley, ITV’s lead football commentator for over 20 years, talks to Andrew Harrison about football at the crossroads, and brushes with legends from Dalglish to Ferguson in his new book Not For Me, Clive: Stories From the Voice of Football.

• “Football is the greatest meritocracy in the world. You can buy a football club. But you can’t buy your way into a team”
• “The famous Fergie hairdryer just doesn’t work on modern-day footballers”
• “If a political party could harness what we see in football every Saturday, they could take over Europe”

Produced and presented by Andrew Harrison. Assistant producers Jelena Sofronijevic and Jacob Archbold. Music by Kenny Dickinson. Audio production by Alex Rees. THE BUNKER is a Podmasters Production

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Adult video site Pornhub is the tenth most popular website in the world, with seven million clips uploaded every year. It’s also been accused of actively profiting from the abuse of women and young girls via its shady “amateur” videos. How can anyone hold Pornhub to account when its owner is all but anonymous? Tortoise’s Alexi Mostrous and Patricia Clarke tell Ros Taylor how they exposed the identity of Bernd Bergmair – chasing him down from China to New York City to just around the corner from their London offices.

• “Victims of abuse often have to get images of themselves taken down themselves.” 

• “Not only does Pornhub allow abusive content on their site, they fail to get rid of it quickly enough.” 

• “Pornhub’s model is inherently inconsistent with preventing abusive content." 

• “There’s a gap between the bubbly image Pornhub portrays and the anonymity of its owners.” 

Presented by Ros Taylor. Produced by Andrew Harrison. Assistant producers Jelena Sofronijevic and Jacob Archbold. Audio production by Alex Rees. THE BUNKER is a Podmasters Production

https://open.spotify.com/episode/2Lqt3kIsFJBoxM1HBtCUxn 

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As the Government rushes to sign trade deals with some countries (just not our nearest neighbours), special guest Bridget Phillipson, Labour MP and Shadow Treasury Secretary, joins us to work out exactly what Global Britain really means. Have we left the real EU just to join the EU of the 1970s? Plus the “Lab Leak” theory of COVID’s origins seems to be gaining credence. What does this bulletin from the conspiratorial fringe mean for those of us who believe in science and stuff?

• “I don’t think any of us have any idea what the Government means by levelling up.” – Bridget Phillipson MP

• “We’re being sucked into a hugely competitive trading bloc where our society can’t compete… and then we’ll spend the next 20 years trying to get out of it.” – Arthur Snell

• “The Government is talking about solving problems that they themselves caused over the past 10 years.” – Bridget Phillipson MP

• “There’s nothing there in Liz Truss’s Global Britain. It’s just words.” – Marie Le Conte

Presented and produced by Alex Andreou with Arthur Snell and Marie Le Conte. Assistant producers: Jacob Archbold and Jelena Sofronijevic . Music by Kenny Dickinson. Audio production by Alex Rees. The Bunker is a Podmasters Production

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