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

Thank you for tuning in, and you know what I'm going to say. We've got a lot to cram in in our time together.

This is how we're going to structure it, if it's okay with all

of you. A couple of notices from me. And then, in a way, a sequel to the podcast last week in terms

of my reflections, and indeed quite a lot of your questions and points when we come to question

time in the rock and roll politics cooperative.

Now, for those of you who weren't here last week or missed it, what the heck were you doing?

Listen back. It was delving deeper in terms of the post office scandal.

None of this, you know, easy hit on Ed Davy or some other poor sod who was post office

minister for about 10 seconds. They were part of a culture which was arm's length government,

the state can't do anything, operational independence, two words which sound clear, but actually

raise about 10,000 questions in terms

of accountability and responsibility. Anyway, I've had so many responses about how this applies

in other areas. There's going to be a bit of a sequel after our cooperative notices. And over to you as I say mainly on this theme

because there were so many different points raised brilliantly as ever by all of you.

So in terms of the notices just very quickly actually as part of the rubbish state that we are in, I don't mean us

in the podcast. I mean the country. Our local libraries, where I live down in North London,

are in real trouble, big, big cuts because councils are having to cut big time. Anyway, I'm doing a talk on my book, Turning Points,

at Hornsy Library, Sunday week. Now, I know this is not of great use for those of you who

kind of live in Australia and listen, but I thought I'd mention it because, you know,

it's for a good cause. We've got to keep these few institutions that encourage some kind of communal activity,

leaving a house, going somewhere, you know, getting books.

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