Hello and welcome to rock and roll politics, the podcast with me, Steve Richards.

Thank you very much for tuning in.

Before we get going and reflecting on some of the big themes whirling around at the moment,

the emerging tensions between the government and the scientists on SAGE,

the Brexit talks and a new director general for the BBC,

some other kind of lighthearted themes as well, to have a laugh. Don't forget that the virtual

show, Rock and Roll Politics, is back live on June the 17th. Not very far away now. God knows what will have happened by then,

a lot, I suspect. You can get the tickets on the Kings Place website, so please do so

and join me and we'll have some fun. That's Wednesday, June the 17th. A set at a time, by the way, that if there's any

football on that night, you won't miss it. Anyway, back to what's going on. I think it's really one of

the kind of themes that's surfacing is Johnson made very, very clear that the government had a strategy to exit from lockdown.

And that strategy was to be guided.

I've talked about this before.

It wasn't to be guided by the science.

We've been through the kind of evasive nature of the term the science.

But to be guided by that R rate, if it's moving towards one above one,

you know, you then have to lock down again.

And that seemed a sensible strategy that you would follow the R rate.

And that in the end sort of ends all agonising about

what to do or kind of individual judgments about what to do you follow the R rate and so if the R

rate is falling as it is in many countries, places like New Zealand have never been safer

it seems to me. And indeed,

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