The Echo Chamber from Tortoise Shack

This week's guest is author and historian Iain Turner. Iain rose to prominence with the website Balaclava Street in which he produced forensic and in-depth essays on paramilitary loyalism, most notably the UVF. Iain is currently authoring a history of the organisation and has been given unprecedented access to former members of senior rank. In this conversation Iain talks about his motivations for writing about the UVF and what the current unstable political climate might mean for an organisation which declared a ceasefire in 1994.

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Production and Editing by Tony Groves

This Reboot Republic Podcast talks to Sinn Féin spokesperson on housing, Eoin Ó Broin, about their proposals on housing for the upcoming Budget, including increasing capital funding for housing, providing 20,000 public housing, and how that could be done, renters relief, removing investor funds tax breaks, and a referendum on a right to housing.

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Production and Editing by Tony Groves

While Russian President, Vladimir Putin, announced a partial mobilisation of the Russian army, the Ukrainian Parliament was getting on with their work. Rejoining me from a noisy and busy Assembly floor is MP Lesia Vasylenko. We discuss Putin's latest moves, the heartbreaking uncovering of war crimes as the Ukrainian military retake land that was occupied by the Russian army and the #unrussiaUN campaign that is seeking to use this weeks UN Council meeting to act by (at least temporarily) barring Russia from the UN inline with Article 4 of the UN charter and thus removing their security council veto.

The online petition is here: https://www.change.org/p/kick-russia-out-of-the-un

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Production and Editing by Tony Groves

You'd be forgiven for thinking that our (returning) guest today, Space Engineer, Loay Elbasyouni, would be content with building the helicopter that flew on Mars. But that's not Loay. Now he's set his sights on tackling the problems of powering a permanently manned base on the moon. As you do.

We talk about his work, his proud Palestinian background, issues with trying to visit his homeland and why the artist is necessary to the engineer in making science fiction become science fact.

Follow him @AstroLoay

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In this Reboot Republic, part of the special series on Budget 2023, Rory talks to Louise Bayliss of Focus Ireland, Ann Marie O Reilly from Threshold and Colette Bennet from Social Justice Ireland about what the Government should do to address the homelessness, renters and housing crisis in the Budget.

The panel outline the key measures including a ban on evictions, even on a temporary basis, tax relief for renters, investing in prevention of homelessness (currently we spend 20 times the budget on emergency accommodation than on prevention), raising baseline HAP rates up to market rents, as they have not increased since 2016, a rent arrears fund to support those in arrears, an increase by €1.4bn in the capital building budget for social housing.

We also debate the potential effectiveness of tax breaks for landlords, the need for targeted ones linked to sale of property to AHBs and Local authorities. And finally for funding to be allocated to hold the referendum to put a right to housing in the Constitution.

This week we were joined by writer and activist, Emma DeSouza, Stockholm-based journalist, Philip O'Connor and editor at noteworthy.ie, Maria Delaney.

We discuss the ugly weaponising of immigration in the US, the excellent and troubling noteworthy investigation into pesticides, Sinn Féin having a great week, the Budget kites obscuring the real fiscal space, government housing targets getting missed again, the return of Bertie Ahern and buses for VIP's.

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Listeners loved the last podcast with Economic Justice campaigner, Accounting Professor and Co-founder of the Green New Deal, Richard Murphy, so he's back now to tell us about the new UK Prime Minister, Lizz Truss and her cabinet of right wing die-hard neoliberals.

We discuss how unlikely this new government are to "deliver" for the people suffering from inflation and the cost of living crisis, what it means in the modern parlance to be a failed state and just how bad could it all get in the months ahead. So gloomy topics, but Richard also puts forward some more optimistic alternatives.

We also look at what this all means for Ireland, the NI Protocol and that awful word stability.

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Follow Richard @RichardJMurphy for his excellent twitter threads.

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In this second podcast of the Reboot Republic pre-Budget 2023 special series, Rory talks to Tricia Keilthy of the St Vincent De Paul and Tanya Ward of the Children's Rights Alliance, about the impact of the cost of living and housing crises, and what can and should be done in Budget 2023, set to take place on September 27th.

Tricia outlines that the number of calls for help has increased by 20% this year to the SVP, 125,000 this year so far, and 70% of these are from households that are families with children. Tanya outlines the impact of cost of living on children, particularly food and its developmental importance. We also discuss a personal story of homelessness, and the impact on children and families, and how, as Tricia says, we have to continue to highlight the human stories, but also the solutions, and we outline them - this is not inevitable.

The Government should increase welfare in line with inflation (€20 core increase), extend fuel allowance to families working, provide a cost of disability payment, provide public universal childcare and early years, extend free school meals to all schools, build public housing on huge scale including a fresh start to housing policy - a new start.

(Note: The lads open the podcast with their thoughts on the death of Queen Elizabeth, interview starts at minute 10 approx)

Eddie Kinner is a former loyalist prisoner and political activist. He was arrested and charged as a teenager in 1975 and became politically educated in Long Kesh under the guidance of Gusty Spence.

He was heavily involved in the negotiations which led to the brokering of the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement in 1998. In this episode Eddie talks about loyalism and some of the contemporary issues, such as Brexit, which pose a challenge to the loyalist communities of Northern Ireland.

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Ireland plays a role across the globe in assisting other countries establish and develop working legal systems. Joining us to discuss how this works and the challenges they face is Executive Director with Irish Rule of Law International, Aonghus Kelly.

We discuss the importance of a functioning legal system and how they help work in areas that have access to justice issues. Aonghus tells us about their work in countries like Malawi and the impact it can have on people stranded in legal limbo.

We also talk about his upcoming trip to Ukraine to work on the investigation into war crimes. Really important work proudly representing Ireland across the globe.

For more see:www.irishruleoflaw.ie

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