The Bunker – News without the nonsense

After decades of feminist thought, why is history still a parade of men and the things they’ve done? The writers, poets and teachers behind the Twitter initiative @OnThisDayShe are putting women back into history, one day at a time – and they’re not leaving out the serial killers. Jo Bell, Tania Hershman and Ailsa Holland of @OnThisDayShe talk to Jude Rogers about why history leaves women out, their new book, why women don’t have to be heroes… and how your best ideas can come on a day out at the local treacle market.  “If you can’t see it, you can’t be it.” – Tania Hershman  “The way we talk about history is revealing. A man is said to have done something. A women is always ‘reputed’ to have done something.” – Jo Bell “Even if women are recognised in their own time, they’ll often be forgotten by history afterwards.” – Ailsa Holland “Women’s history is always expected to be somehow uplifting. But it’s not history’s job to be inspiring.” – Jo Bell “If I’d know at school about some of the women we’ve featured it would have changed my whole outlook on life.” – Tania Hershman “This isn’t women’s history. It’s everyone’s history, with women put back in.” – Jo Bell Presented by Jude Rogers. 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 See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What does it mean to be indispensable? From Major through New Labour to the Coalition, the late Civil Service giant Jeremy Heywood was to a key advisor to four Prime Ministers, and Cabinet Secretary to two. Theresa May described him as “the greatest public servant of our age”. His widow Suzanne tells Ros Taylor about her new book What Does Jeremy Think?, what it took for Jeremy Heywood to manage crises from Black Wednesday to Brexit, and how he handled the duty of pushing through policies he himself feared were wrong.   “Jeremy had been in training to get the best result out of Brexit for Britain for almost all his professional life…” “It was only while writing the book that I realised how close the UK came to a total banking collapse during the Financial Crisis.” Presented by Ros Taylor. Produced by Andrew Harrison. Assistant producers: Jacob Archbold and Jelena Sofronijevic. Logo and branding by Mark Taylor. Music: Kenny Dickinson. Audio production by Alex Rees. The Bunker is a Podmasters production See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

From the ownership of Manchester City and Paris St. Germain to motor sport in the Middle East to the Beijing Olympics, questionable regimes are laundering their reputations by association with elite sport. Does “sportswashing” work, and what can fans do about it? Murad Ahmed, Sports Editor of the FT and host of their Business of Football Summit, gives Andrew Harrison the inside track on sport’s dirty secrets.   “No fan of a sports team thinks of themselves as a consumer of a global brand. But that’s exactly what marketing directors think.” “The sports market has been completely distorted by ownership by Middle Eastern states.” “The weaponising of fans to go after critics of your country is really worrying.” Presented and produced by Andrew Harrison. Assistant producers: Jacob Archbold and Jelena Sofronijevic. Logo and branding by Mark Taylor. Music: Kenny Dickinson. Audio production by Alex Rees. The Bunker is a Podmasters production See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Britain’s COVID policy has failed women so badly that organisations from Amnesty to the Fawcett Society have called for the EHRC to intervene. Why can’t our blokey-bloke Cabinet understand that more than half the population is being hit harder by the virus – and getting less help? Plus special guest Caroline Lucas MP explains the radical, cross-party Climate and Ecological Emergency Bill. And as Samira Ahmed (possibly) takes over Mastermind, what are our panel’s specialist subjects and starters for ten? “Three million and more people have had no support since March. That’s unforgivable. And it hits women disproportionately.” – Caroline Lucas  “We need a lot more bolshy, aggressive, assertive policies if we’re going to get gender parity around COVID and beyond.” – Miatta Fahnbulleh “To be fair to the Government’s sense of imagination, they have found imaginative ways to spread COVID” – Ahir Shah “When you have a PM who uses terms like ‘girly swot’ and ‘big girl’s blouse’, that’s not someone who’s very interested in gender equality.” – Caroline Lucas Presented by Naomi Smith with Miatta Fahnbulleh and Ahir Shah. 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 See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

As enforced hotel quarantine kicks in, will closed borders mollify the increasingly restive Covid Recovery Group? And brace yourself for an entirely unnecessary War on Woke as the Government invents the Free Speech Champion – the worst superhero ever. Ian Dunt sets out the coming week for Andrew Harrison. “You’d imagine that closed borders and quarantine would be exactly what the CRG want.” “We won’t see much of Labour on the war on woke. But we haven’t seen much of Labour on anything lately.”  Presented and 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 See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

When opposition figurehead and recovered Novichok target Alexei Navalny flew back to Russia to lead democracy protests, he took an enormous personal risk, of which instant imprisonment was only a part. Could Navalny’s mix of street demos and slick social media mockery really destabilise Putin’s regime? Luke Harding, author of Shadow State : Murder, Mayhem and Russia's Remaking of the West, explains the background to Navalny’s gamble… and the meaning of the casino, nightclub and “aqua-discotheque” in ‘Putin’s Palace’.  “Navalny shone a light on corruption – not just by Putin, but his friends.”  “Navalny’s return to Russia was one of the bravest things I’ve ever seen.”  “Putin is a dictator. It’s a tired old show that Russians are tired of watching.”  “Navalny’s popularity is clearly growing. If you can get people to protest in minus fifty, you must be cutting through.”   Presented and 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 See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The American writer George Saunders won the 2017 Booker Prize with Lincoln In The Bardo and is an award-winning author of short stories. His new book A Swim In A Pond In The Rain explains how short stories work with the aid of Chekhov, Turgenev, Tolstoy, and Dorian Lynskey is a fan. George Saunders talks to Dorian about his “shovel in the fictive graveyard”, being a working class writer in a middle class world, the value of “looming catastrophe” in life and art… and why reading fiction is the best training for spotting lies in loved ones, colleagues and politicians.  “I had the idea that literature was a beautiful gilded mansion and I had to leave all my real shit at the door. And it’s not true.” “Our basic storytelling gland has to do with curiosity” “My job as a writer is to get to a place where the world doesn’t surprise me.” “A story isn’t a monolithic whole that comes from the writer’s moral qualities. It’s a magic trick made out of fragments of language.” “When you’ve got an administration that rejects enlightenment values they’re not susceptible to satire. And I found that with Trump.” Presented by Dorian Lynskey. 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 See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Even after the horror of the Grenfell Fire, millions of people are still living in homes with cheap, inflammable cladding – and the effort to fix it has stalled. Steve Cole, head of corporate strategy at the housing association Clarion, and Inside Housing’s award-winning editor Peter Apps tell Naomi Smith about a scandal that’s been inexcusably neglected, how austerity paved the way for this tragedy, and how to force the Government to take action before another disaster.  “There are up to 4.6m flats affected by dangerous cladding and that’s 11m people. That’s equivalent to the entire population of London.” – Peter Apps “British homes are like US cars. They’re only energy efficient because they run on cheap fuel.” – Steve Cole “Why should the taxpayer pay to fix a problem of the construction industry?” – Peter Apps “Regulation isn’t worth much of it’s not enforced… Austerity took a lot of expertise and enforcement out of local government.” – Steve Cole Presented by Naomi Smith. Produced by Andrew Harrison. Assistant producers Jacob Archbold and Jelena Sofrenijevic. Music by Kenny Dickinson. Audio production by Alex Rees. The Bunker is a Podmasters Production. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Can Keir Starmer re-energise Labour by connecting it to the symbols its old voters admire? And why are progressives so neurotic about patriotism? Plus, with Russia and China distributing Sputnik and Sinovac around the world, are COVID vaccines a surprisingly hard tool of soft power? And why is supposedly ‘Global’ Britain giving up on learning foreign languages? Ahir Shah, Yasmeen Serhan and Arthur Snell join Andrew Harrison for this week’s panel edition. “To a lot of us the Union Jack only means two things: the World Cup, or fear.” – Ahir Shah “Rich countries need to understand that they may have all the vaccines, but it doesn’t mean they’re more immune.” – Yasmeen Serhan “What the outside world doesn’t realise is, Putin’s popularity in the polls is dropping fast.” – Arthur Snell Presented and produced by Andrew Harrison. Assistant producers: Jacob Archbold and Jelena Sofronijevic. Logo and branding by Mark Taylor. Music: Kenny Dickinson. Audio production by Alex Rees. The Bunker is a Podmasters production See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What to watch out for in the next seven days: Trumpeachment II and the Republicans’ Faustian bargain with their own fantasists, worsening import-export crisis in Britain’s Brexit-battered ports, Labour exposes the Government’s crony contracts and more. Alex Andreou marks your card for the week ahead.  “The in and out valves to this country are jammed.” “Haulage is not a curve, it’s a tipping point. At some point, it will become unprofitable for these businesses to trade in the UK.” “Covid-19 is no longer an emergency, it’s a fact of life.” Presented and produced by Andrew Harrison. Assistant producers: Jacob Archbold and Jelena Sofronijevic. Logo and branding by Mark Taylor. Music: Kenny Dickinson. Audio production by Alex Rees. The Bunker is a Podmasters production See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices