The Bunker – Your daily news Deep Dive

Is Britain as divided over COVID as we were over Brexit? Do people really think that if you lost your job during the pandemic, it’s your fault? And if Brexity pundits are so anti-lockdown, why are Leave voters largely in favour of restrictions? Bobby Duffy (Director of the Policy Institute at King’s College ) and Paula Surridge (Deputy Director of the UK in a Changing Europe) have researched our changing attitudes with surprising results. They tell Ros Taylor about the deep impulses driving politics – and whether Leave vs Remain identities might finally be breaking down. 

• “Even though we’ve seen a transfer of wealth from young to old, we just don’t see people saying Let’s take from the old and give to the young” – Bobby Duffy
• “Leave/Remain is often seen as a generation gap but it’s more to do with education.” – Paula Surridge
• “There is an opportunity to reimagine our economy… but it won’t come easy.” – Bobby Duffy
• “Real lockdown scepticism is actually a rarity… It doesn’t bring people together across the political spectrum, it splits them up” – Bobby Duffy

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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The Metropolitan Police’s brutal intervention during Saturday’s vigil Sarah Everard leaves the country aghast. What really happened? What needs to change if British cities are to be safe for women? Special guest Alex Massie of The Times and The Spectator joins us to look at the “fantastically illiberal” Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill, and give his personal crash course on Scottish politics for the inattentive English. 

• “A lot of forces who are no friend of women are jumping on this issue for their own motives.” – Ayesha Hazarika
• “Just as Independence was underpriced in 2014, Unionism is underpriced in 2021.” – Alex Massie
• “In politics, success is sweet but it’s not half as sweet as your enemy’s failure.” – Alex Massie

Presented and produced by Andrew Harrison with Yasmeen Serhan and Ayesha Hazarika. 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 Met’s outrageous clampdown on the Sarah Everard vigil on Clapham Common has put Priti Patel’s draconian Police, Crime, Sentencing And Courts Bill under a harsh spotlight. Could a bill that effectively outlaws public protest blow up in the Government’s face this week? Ros Taylor explains. 

• “Public protest has become illegal, and we didn’t seem to notice that.” 
• “A protest looks very different when it’s women doing it.”

Presented and produced by Andrew Harrison. 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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“Peter explains better than anyone I know the new world of Putinesque, Trumpian propaganda.” In a weekend bonus, Nick Cohen of The Observer talks to Peter Pomerantsev, author of This Is Not Propaganda : Adventures in the War Against Reality, about how demagogues warp free speech into a weapon against democracy.

Why is the modern information battle less of a New Cold War and more a New Thirty Years War? Do we even understand the devil’s bargain that tech giants are offering? We can have perfect lives and perfect homes – as long as we don’t mind giving up our information and our freedoms. 

• “Every aspect of freedom of speech has been used against us, to swamp the world and drown out the truth”
• “However much we’d like to blame these pathologies on Mark Zuckerberg, we can’t.”
• “It’s no longer about censorship, it’s about overloading democracies with trolls, bots and conspiracies… it’s about swamping us with information”
• “When you have an economy based on likes and shares, that’s going to reinforce tribal identities”
• “Extremism is about demonising the other. What we’re seeing is something eternal”

Presented by Nick Cohen. Produced by Andrew Harrison. 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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Few countries exercise such world-wide fascination while being as little understood outside their own borders as Japan. Christopher Harding, author of The Japanese: A History In 20 Lives, talks to Ros Taylor about the key figures who shaped Japan over the centuries, from princesses and samurai to pop culture visionaries.

• “A British delegate who visited Japan in the 1990s said ‘If this is a recession, then I want one’”
• “Japan needs more babies, more immigrants, more robots.”
• “People fall in love with some element of Japan… but we don’t have a joined up sense of Japanese history.”

Presented by Ros Taylor. Produced by Andrew Harrison. 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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Yemen is suffering the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, a conflict that has killed some 100,000 people since 2015 and left 24m in peril. Now it’s dragging countries across the region into its vortex. How did we get here? Exactly how are Saudi Arabia and Iran involved? Will the election of Joe Biden make a difference? Arthur Snell talks to Laura Cretney, a PhD student at Durham University who works with charities in the region, to disentangle a nightmare confrontation between Houthi rebels, the Yemeni government and multiple foreign interests. 

• “For many young men, the best and most lucrative way to provide for their families is to take up arms.”
• “This isn’t just a proxy conflict between Saudi and Iran. There are a LOT of regional rivalries here.”

Presented by Arthur Snell. Produced by Andrew Harrison. Assistant producers: Jacob Archbold and Jelena Sofronijevic. Logo and branding by Mark Taylor. Music: Kenny Dickinson. Audio production by Robin Leeburn. The Bunker is a Podmasters production

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Amid the chaos of the Capitol Invasion of January 6, keen observers could spot the iconography of Valkism, a weird confected “religion” born out of video game culture that’s now empowering QAnon and far right politics. Former Government advisor and BBC and Reuters correspondent Amil Khan tells Arthur Snell about the crossover of video games, 4Chan, 8Chan and far right politics which produced Valkism and what it means for the fight against extremism.

• “Some of these people want to create an alternative reality where their political fantasies can play out.” – Amil Khan
• “If you’re inspired by the idea of a Nazi alternative universe in a video game, you may well be attracted to far right politics.” – Arthur Snell
• “We like think that we’re stable, rational people and the nutters must be from somewhere else. Well, the US Capitol riots disproved that.” – Amil Khan
• “We tend to see extremism as a foreign problem... But this is a British problem, because it feeds off our problems at home.” – Amil Khan

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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It’s the end of an era! As parents collapse weeping to their knees in a fug of gin, has home schooling changed how we teach kids? Will in-school testing stick? And will the experience shine a light on the God-awfulness of the National Curriculum? PLUS: After that derisory nurses’ pay offer, how long ’til the U-Turn? Porklife as the Government shovels “levelling up” money to Tory constituencies. Farage retires! Again! And why can’t we stop collecting stuff?

Ros Taylor, Ahir Shah and Arthur Snell join Alex Andreou for this week’s panel edition.

• “Perhaps forcing a young woman to dress up and endure whatever hatred the press want to throw at her is inhuman. And perhaps we should stop doing it.” – Ros Taylor
• “Even the most loving and caring parents are saying OK, please take this away from me, I don’t know what a quadratic is.” – Ahir Shah
• “It’s fair to say that parents trust the heads rather more than they trust Gavin Williamson.” – Ros Taylor
• “Like a lot of parents I thought, how hard can teaching be? Turns out it’s QUITE difficult…” – Arthur Snell
• “What’s a fronted adverbial? Trust me, you’re happier not knowing.” – Ros Taylor
• “If I have to do a spreadsheet for a pint, I will do a spreadsheet for a pint.” – Ahir Shah

Presented by Alex Andreou with Ros Taylor, Ahir Shah and Arthur Snell. Produced by Andrew Harrison. 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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What does today’s International Women’s Day stand for when we’re in the middle of a new wave of feminism? What can women expect from government when its fill-in Equalities Minister thinks there ought to be a Minister for Men? Naomi Smith presents a special edition with regulars Nina Schick and Minnie Rahman plus special guest Jude Kelly, former artistic director of the Southbank Centre and founder of the WOW – Women of the World – Foundation. 

• “It always irritates me when a man says ‘I’m interested in feminism because of my daughter’. Well, didn’t you care before?” – Jude Kelly
• “It’s no good just having someone like Priti Patel in cabinet, unless there’s a matching political will for gender equality.” – Minnie Rahman
• “Having to persuade and listen for centuries has given women fantastic negotiating skills – and men can really learn from that.” – Jude Kelly

Presented by Naomi Smith with Nina Schick and Minnie Rahman. Produced by Jelena Sofronijevic. Music by Kenny Dickinson. Audio production by Alex Rees. THE BUNKER is a Podmasters Production

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Novelist Sergei Lebedev writes forensically detailed books which uncover how Soviet history still exerts its power on modern Russians. According to the New York Review of Books he’s “the best of Russia’s younger generation of writers.” He talks to Alex Andreou about his latest novel, the COVID-relevant thriller Untraceable; precarious life in the new Russia; and how the Soviet Union might be dead but it’s never truly buried.  

• “I’m witnessing my country returning to its past. And I wouldn’t want to be a person who does nothing about it”

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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