James Ball is a journalist and the current Global Editor of the Bureau of Investigative Journalism. He worked with WikiLeaks on the Iraq War documents leak in 2010 and was part of The Guardian team that helped published the Edward Snowden sneaks about the NSA.
Last week I sat down with James in a London heatwave to reflect on Boris Johnson becoming PM, stockpiling for a no-deal Brexit, the way bullshit works in today's politics, the anti-Semitism scandal in the British Labour Party and the plight of Julian Assange.
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Then ENOUGH is at the Soho Theatre from Monday September 2nd
I'm on the latest episode of The Bugle with Andy Zaltzman & Nato Green
James' writing at The New Statesman
James' writing at The Guardian
James' speech Bathing in Bullshit, 2017
ARTICLE: Inside the Strange, Paranoid World of Julian Assange by James Ball
ARTICLE: Chelsea Manning is in jail. Our silence is shameful by James Ball
ARTICLE: Labour says it will would end the welfare freeze (BBC NEWS)
ARTICLE: The Strange Case of Julian Assange by Bernard Keane
Cause of the Week: Overgate Hospice (overgatehospice.co.uk)
Corey White is a comedian and writer with a pretty remarkable personal story. His memoir The Prettiest Horse in the Glue Factory is a funny, dark and brutally honest account of being raised in a violent working class home, being put through the harsh foster care system, struggling with issues of sexual identity and drug addiction and eventually becoming the comedian and man he is today.
Here, Corey and I compare notes on our very different childhoods and discuss issues of class, being a member of the lumpenproletariat, the welfare state, outrage, the case for a UBI and "fusionism". We laugh a lot throughout.
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The Prettiest Horse in the Glue Factory through Penguin
Corey's event at the Moonee Ponds Library on Monday July 29th
ARTICLE: Corey White on childhood trauma, foster care and comedy: 'It's a factory for the insane'
Corey on Q&A discussing incentivised contraception
Cause of the Week: The Pyjama Foundation (thepyjamafoundation.com)
Former Greens senator and lifelong campaigner Lee Rhiannon has been fighting on the Left since she was fifteen years old.
Almost a year on from stepping down as a Senator for NSW after losing preselection to Mehreen Faruqi, Lee talks to me about being spied on by ASIO from the age of seven, being raised by socialist parents, the state of the union movement, just how badly neoliberalism has knocked around the Left, the tensions that continue to frustrate the Australian Greens and how the party can find a better way to reach out to working people.
Woahhh how cool you can support this show by becoming a Patron please radical, man!
I’m doing a preview of ENOUGH at The Bill Murray in London on Tuesday July 23rd
Then ENOUGH is coming to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in August and the Soho Theatre in September
ARTICLE: Outgoing Lee Rhiannon urges Greens to resist 'careerism and bullying'
ARTICLE: Enemies within as Greens are caught in civil war
Cause of the Week: Frontline Action on Coal (frontlineaction.org)
Playwright, commentator and activist Van Badham is back on the podcast after she joined me in July of 2015.
Since then Van has been a passionate advocate for the re-election of a Labor government and a scathing critic of The Australian Greens. I was keen to dig further into her thinking on that and ask her what she thought went wrong in the 2019 federal election (the answer might surprise you). Van mounts a vigorous defence of Labor's policies here and explains why she sees it as the major hope for the socialist Left in Australia.
Plus also you will hear her dog barking in the background.
Woahhh how cool you can support this show by becoming a Patron please radical, man!
I'm doing two previews of ENOUGH at The Bill Murray in London on July 16th & 23rd
Then ENOUGH is coming to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in August and the Soho Theatre in September
Van's play Banging Denmark at the Sydney Opera House
Van's opinion pieces:
Labor's support for tax cuts is an unfathomable betrayal of principle
Australian Labor led centre-left parties into neoliberalism. Can they lead it out?
Labour has a chance if it replaces Corbyn. Look at Australia in 1983
Time to hail Hilary Clinton - and face down the testosterone left
How I fell out of love with the Greens: a personal story about the Labor Party
The ALP National Platform 2018
ARTICLE: Van Badham's defence of Hillary Clinton is insufferable right wing crap by Sarah Garnham
ARTICLE: Van Badham's defence of Clinton is preposterous by Michael Brull
ARTICLE: It wasn't Bob Brown who lost the election, it was the Labor Party by James Norman
ARTICLE: How Australia's Labor Party Lost an Un-Loseable Election by Daniel Lopez
Cause of the Week: The Australian Labor Party (alp.org.au)
Josh Bornstein is an employment and IR lawyer at Maurice & Blackburn and the director at the Australia Institute.
He's been increasingly concerned about the level of control that Australian employers have gained over their employees' freedom of speech and expression. So when it comes to the case of Israel Falou, he's been (controversially) outspoken about the legal ramifications for workers if we accept that your boss can fire you for saying the wrong thing.
Here Josh and I take the time to flesh out his argument on this, how one can unequivocally condemn what Falou said but still object to him losing his job and what the implications for this saga might be for anti-discrimination protections moving forward.
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ENOUGH is coming to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in August and the Soho Theatre in September
ARTICLE: Sacked for speaking your mind? Don't expect the free speech brigade to help by Jason Wilson
ARTICLE: Integrity - it's all Greek to the hypocrites of the Right by Josh Bornstein
ARTICLE: Everyone Is Wrong About Israel Falou by Lane Sainty
Winners Take All by Anand Giridharadas
Cause of the Week: The Centre for Future Work (futurework.org.au)