Episodes

Monday Dec 19, 2022
ON STRIKES - INTERESTING TIMES 61
Monday Dec 19, 2022
Monday Dec 19, 2022
In this podcast, I outline the general characteristics of strikes and the structural antagonism between economic classes at the core of capitalism with which they are entangled. I give examples from the current wave of strikes in the UK and the government, gutter press and social media troll responses to them. In the process I identify and analyse a handful of propaganda methods we encounter there. [Click here to buy me a coffee.] [Free. 37 minutes.]

Thursday Oct 13, 2022
GROWTH, GROWTH, GROWTH? - INTERESTING TIMES 60
Thursday Oct 13, 2022
Thursday Oct 13, 2022
In this podcast, we examine what UK Prime Minister Truss means by the mantra "Growth, growth, growth." We follow by discussing how economic growth is defined formally by The Bank of England. Growth is understood by such institutions as being an increase in the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of a nation state over time. We take issue with the notion that GDP is a measure that is useful to facilitate global human flourishing and look at alternative metrics for determining the health and size of an economy. We note that the Bank of England also identifies shortcomings in GDP for getting a good picture of an economy. We take The Happy Planet index as an example of an alternative metric to GDP and tease out some of the features of its threefold desideratum, for a good, healthy economy of "long, happy and sustainable lives". We point out that the GDP measure is useful only to gamblers in the exclusive global casino of finance capital. Click the link to by me a coffee :) [Free. 36 minutes]

Thursday Sep 29, 2022
DESTRUCTIVE CONSEQUENCES OF TRUSSONOMIC - INTERESTING TIMES 58
Thursday Sep 29, 2022
Thursday Sep 29, 2022
In this podcast we discuss the recent UK mini-budget and its immediate consequences. We draw out the necessity for a wide range of co-ordinated radical activisms to bring about necessary system change, the inter-relatedness of the many crises facing the UK and the world beyond, and the centrality to any cogent analysis of an understanding of economic class-antagonism. [Free. 41 minutes.]
![CORPORATIONS TO RUN CITIES IN THE UK SOON? [PART 1]](https://deow9bq0xqvbj.cloudfront.net/image-logo/771447/hyradiologobig2_300x300.png)
Monday Jul 18, 2022
CORPORATIONS TO RUN CITIES IN THE UK SOON? [PART 1]
Monday Jul 18, 2022
Monday Jul 18, 2022
In this podcast, we consider the Tory Government proposal to institute eight 'Charter Cities' in the UK. Charter Cities are planned to be areas which are given over to governance by a corporation which is likely to remove workers protections, ban minimum wage laws, dismantle welfare, quash restrictions on working hours and more. All this is thought to be facilitated by Brexit and the subsequent revocation of EU regulations. For its neoliberal proponents, who are universally drawn from the big oil funded right international, this is a utopia which will end world poverty. We argue the contrary, that it will be a monstrously dystopian anti-democratic nightmare in which workers will be treated like disposable things and which must be stopped. For background, a good shortish read is here - https://medium.com/@cormack.lawson/charter-cities-the-real-reason-for-brexit-and-the-bigger-picture-4de80dbb69fbhttps://medium.com/@cormack.lawson/charter-cities-the-real-reason-for-brexit-and-the-bigger-picture-4de80dbb69fb [Free. 58 minutes.]

Friday Jun 10, 2022
APOCALYPSE REPORT JUNE 22 - INTERESTING TIMES 54
Friday Jun 10, 2022
Friday Jun 10, 2022
This wide-ranging episode of Interesting Times deals with the recent rise of inflation in the economy in the context of the reflections on inflation, money-printing and organised labour by a variety of economist, starting with the Thatcher-Reagan guru, Milton Friedman. Amongst related topics, we note a global renaissance in trade union organisation, a global crisis in food distribution, disintegration of UK farming, and the failure of the world to be make adequate provision to mitigate future pandemics. [Free. 53 minutes.]

Saturday Nov 20, 2021
TORIES ON THE ROPES? - INTERESTING TIMES 43
Saturday Nov 20, 2021
Saturday Nov 20, 2021
In the light of the MPs second jobs scandal, we ask, 'How much more will the public put up with?' This leads to questions about the nature of ideology, and the contradictory class consciousness of Tories who make light of in-work poverty and the cutting of Universal Credit on the one hand, and then, on the other hand, plead that MPs need second jobs because they can't discharge their familial duty on £82 per annum! We underscore the point that this current scandal isn't anything fundamentally new, but a symptom of the profound and toxic entanglement of corporate and state power in the UK. [Free. 44 minutes.]
![ECONOMIC COLLAPSE IN THE UK & BEYOND - PART3 [THE FUTURE]](https://deow9bq0xqvbj.cloudfront.net/image-logo/771447/hyradiologobig2_300x300.png)
Saturday Nov 13, 2021
ECONOMIC COLLAPSE IN THE UK & BEYOND - PART3 [THE FUTURE]
Saturday Nov 13, 2021
Saturday Nov 13, 2021
This podcast continues our series on economic collapse. It considers what the future might involve using the COP26 climate change conference as an indicator and focussing on economic, ecological and cultural systems. [Free. 1 hour 17 minutes.]

Friday Nov 05, 2021
TORY SLEAZE - INTERESTING TIMES 41
Friday Nov 05, 2021
Friday Nov 05, 2021
In this podcast, we take a look at the resignation of Owen Patterson in the wake of the government U-turn on standards of behaviour for MPs, particularly with respect to paid lobbying. We place this in the context of the gradual turning up of the heat of criticism of Boris Johnson and his cabal by the right wing media and the grooming of Starmer by both Murdoch and the Mail. [Free. 30 minutes.]
![ECONOMIC COLLAPSE IN THE UK & BEYOND - PART 2a [THE PRESENT]](https://deow9bq0xqvbj.cloudfront.net/image-logo/771447/hyradiologobig2_300x300.png)
Tuesday Oct 19, 2021
ECONOMIC COLLAPSE IN THE UK & BEYOND - PART 2a [THE PRESENT]
Tuesday Oct 19, 2021
Tuesday Oct 19, 2021
In this second episode of our series on economic collapse, we examine a number of current economic crises in the UK and beyond and see if they resonate with what we encountered when examining some historical examples of collapse in Part 1. We focus particularly on the economic aspects of the crises in question. [Free. 1 hour 15 minutes.]
![ECONOMIC COLLAPSE IN THE UK & BEYOND? - PART 1 [HISTORY]](https://deow9bq0xqvbj.cloudfront.net/image-logo/771447/hyradiologobig2_300x300.png)
Friday Oct 15, 2021
ECONOMIC COLLAPSE IN THE UK & BEYOND? - PART 1 [HISTORY]
Friday Oct 15, 2021
Friday Oct 15, 2021
In this podcast we look at the economic collapses of 1929 and 2008 to see if we can discern any essential features. The point of this broad-brush historical delving is the get an understanding of economic collapse per se and then, in subsequent podcasts, to see if we are in danger of a similar collapse in the present. [Free. 40 minutes.]