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After upsetting the base last week our intrepid duo has called a holiday truce. We’re out of the trenches and playing footy in no man’s land. And speaking of desolate, deadly landscapes, the Government has announced an exit deal with the European Union.
Britons are now free! (We know you’ll want to read all 1,255 pages for yourself…) Of course, you’re not allowed to leave your homes, but you’re free! Is this enough to judge Boris Johnson a success or will his response to the pandemic find him wanting in the judgment of history?
With Christmas 2020 in the books, James and Toby look back at their top presents, and Toby starts to wade through his Bafta DVDs (Did we ever mention Toby is a Bafta member?) including Wonder Woman 1984 and The Prom.
The next time we see you it will be 2021 and we’ll know if we made the Queen’s New Year Honours.
This week’s opening sound is the PM’s Brexit announcement.
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Yellow Bear Financial Consultancy LLP
London Calling is sponsored by Yellow Bear Financial Consultancy LLP.
Nazi memorabilia…the perfect Christmas gift for the man who has everything!
😂😂😂
EJ, any chance you could encourage James to sit closer to his mic, or maybe encourage Tobes to sit farther away? Couldn’t quite find a comfortable listening volume for this one.
James has a tendency to drift. There’s always a difference between the beginning and the end.
Maybe a headset?
‘Logan’s Run dystopia’- I love it Toby. Great bit about the archers at Agincourt. Amazing that they were so successful militarily.
On Brexit, James reminds me of those late-18th-Century American eccentrics who accused George Washington of being a British agent.
The problem with dismissing things as tin-foil-hat-conspiracy theories is that all revolutions start out the same way – unthinkable. Although there is nothing in the way of polling or any modern-style reading of the pulse of the nation, who in the spring of 1761 would have seen what would come in 15 years time?
In the spring of 1917 not even the Communists believed they could topple the Russian government. Alexander Shliapnikov, who would become the first Soviet Commissar of Labor said of February street protests, “What revolution? Give the workers a pound of bread and the movement will peter out.”
And, of course, I would be breaking Godwin’s law to recount how the Western nations felt about the funny little man with the Charlie Chaplin mustache.
In the Thirties, widespread conspiracy theories about “munitions makers” delayed rearmament among all the democratic powers; thus, the desperate last-minute heroics of the Battle of Britain and the Pacific War.
During the Russian Revolution, what brought down the Kerensky regime was its refusal to end a disastrous and unpopular war.
In North America in 1761, there were no conspiracy theories about a (then nonexistent) anti-British movement.
I like Toby calling out how Delingpole is quite similar to a Communist in how to he wants to destroy anyone who isn’t as pure as he is.
About 29 minutes in he mentions that he wants to burn down the Cathedral.