This is CBSI in the world. I'm John Batch with my colleague, Joseph Sternberg.

Walk in the park for Joe and myself three years ago, as I was in New York, Joe was in London.

The world was shut down with the early days of the pandemic. Nobody knew the next direction

except for there was no street traffic and my memory is that London, ban park walking.

They have the magnificent parks and that's what they're for, but that spring time, it was

silent for people. Lots of birds, but silent for people. Twenty years ago was the beginning

of the Iraq war and before we go to the parks in London, Joe, where were you in March

of 2003 when the US invaded and broke Iraq?

I was actually here in London because I was an undergrad student in college at the time

and I was doing a junior year abroad here in the 2002 to 2003 academic year.

And so I sort of witnessed the British part of that and the intense controversy that

there was in the UK at the time, including a lot of anti-war protests, but then also

the determination and the part of the British government to, you know, if Tony Blair

to stand alongside the George W. Bush administration to participate in that effort.

So you remember London 20 years ago as a beautiful visit. Three years ago, however, we come

to what the pandemic meant to London and I recall you telling me that you couldn't walk

in the park, then there were days up ahead where you could walk in the park, but you couldn't

talk to somebody. You had to sort of stand apart and they weren't even playing, you're

kicking soccer ball around, a football around. However, what we're learning today is in

Britain that on many of those decisions, including you can't go into the park or made arbitrarily,

you've written about this in your column. Matt Hancock was the health secretary at the

time and on a deal of his WhatsApp messages have come to the daily telegraph and they published

...