Festive flu and the West’s cowardly silence after the Bondi massacre
Planet Normal
Louisa Wells
4.7 • 2.9K Ratings
🗓️ 18 December 2025
⏱️ 71 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Your Co-pilots reflect on a sombre week as the festive season is overshadowed by the beach massacre in Sydney earlier this week.
Co-pilot Pearson delivers a blistering critique of Western leaders whom she accuses of failing to confront the root of Islamist extremism.
Liam connects the tragedy to the rising sense of fear among the Jewish community in the UK, arguing that the ‘aggressive’ weekly protests should not be allowed to continue in the Capital.
On the economic front, Liam warns of rising youth unemployment and Ed Miliband’s growing European isolation on Net Zero following the EU's retreat from petrol car bans.
And the Shadow Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, Claire Couthino, straps in to tell your co-pilots why Labour’s Net Zero drive won’t encourage economic growth.
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Read Allison ‘It’s time to end the cowardly appeasement of radical Islamism’: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/12/16/bondi-beach-jewish-massacre-allison-pearson/ |
Read more from Allison: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/authors/a/ak-ao/allison-pearson/ |
Read Liam ‘Labour’s nutty EV policies are pushing us towards economic catastrophe’: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2025/12/14/labour-ev-policies-pushing-towards-economic-catastrophe/ |
Read more from Liam: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/authors/liam-halligan/ |
Read Liam’s Substack: https://liamhalligan.substack.com/ |
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The Telegraph. |
| 0:09.0 | Surely the only thing that's stopping the protests being banned |
| 0:14.0 | is because the authorities haven't got the bottle. |
| 0:17.8 | Four. |
| 0:19.4 | In theory, the party of workers, although we all know they're not at the moment. |
| 0:23.5 | Three. |
| 0:24.9 | So our policymaking credibility is in tatters. |
| 0:28.5 | Two. |
| 0:30.0 | The reaction of Western leaders to these kind of atrocities, Islamist atrocities, |
| 0:35.0 | is to do anything except name the evil that's behind it. |
| 0:43.3 | Welcome once again to Planet Normal, the Telegraph podcast with Alison Pearson. |
| 0:49.3 | Hello. And me Liam Halligan. It's just a week until Christmas co-pilot, but the High Street |
| 0:56.2 | Tills are still subdued and the news is anything but festive. The Bondi Beach Massacre saw two |
| 1:02.4 | gunmen open fire on a crowd of roughly 1,000 people attending the Hunneker by the sea event in Sydney, |
| 1:08.3 | Australia. After more than 100 rounds were fired from pedestrian |
| 1:12.1 | bridge using rifles and shotguns, 15 victims were killed and another 40 injured. The perpetrators, |
| 1:20.4 | Indian-born Sadie Dachram, age 50 and his 24-year-old Australian-born son Navid have been charged |
| 1:26.0 | with acts of terrorism. Authorities say the pair |
| 1:28.9 | were motivated by Islamic state ideology, an extremist anti-Semitism, and two IS flags and improvised |
| 1:36.7 | explosive devices were found in their vehicle. You've written extremely powerfully about this |
| 1:42.1 | ghastly incident in Wednesday's telegraph, Alison, link in the show notes. I've meanwhile focused on the economy with the UK seeing |
| 1:49.1 | another rise in unemployment this week, and the Bank of England set to make its latest |
... |
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