Good evening and welcome to the Pompey Politics Podcast.

I'm Ian Tini Morris.

And I'm Simon Sandspring.

Good evening, Simon.

It would seem, despite my desperate attempts to keep the focus on local issues,

that there have been certain events happening

at a national level which are somewhat unavoidable and in the absence of a podcast next

Sunday we've opted to do a Tuesday night special.

He did so thankfully no one said to us on Sunday that that they would see us next tuesday um but here they

here we are um so yes we're we're going to take a bit of a a journey around westminster

or the issues at westminster or the latest episode of tory's got talent it's down the autumn

season i guess um so but with us much like we did the other day where we had, where we asked the

interstep to the other side of the, of the microphone, as it were, to help Simon Boucher, or to join

Simon Bosh, giving a bit of a local perspective. We are now also joined by a

conservative member, Paddy Bergen. So welcome. Thank you for joining us, Patty.

You're more than welcome. Yes, they say that, they say that misery shared is misery halfed. So thank you,

Patty, for coming to join me on another tricky episode for those of us

that have historically flown the blue flag.

So I will metaphorically climb to the climb to be alongside you virtually.

And Simon can rub his hands together with glee and uh head down

his uh his route of questioning i'm sure okay um lovely well so um well let's get started so um paddy how

um so how as we've now outed you as a Conservative

...