The Week: Defence Spending, Benefit Cuts and The Spring Statement
Newscast
BBC
4.3 • 6.6K Ratings
🗓️ 21 March 2025
⏱️ 30 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Today, James and Chris are joined by Lucy Fisher from the FT and Stephanie Flanders from Bloomberg to discuss; whether the Prime Minister can convince the public that an increase in defence spending is needed, how the benefit cuts are being received and what to expect from the spring statement.
You can now listen to Newscast on a smart speaker. If you want to listen, just say "Ask BBC Sounds to play Newscast”. It works on most smart speakers. You can join our Newscast online community here: https://discord.gg/m3YPUGv9
New episodes released every day. If you're in the UK, for more News and Current Affairs podcasts from the BBC, listen on BBC Sounds: https://bit.ly/3ENLcS1 Newscast brings you daily analysis of the latest political news stories from the BBC. It was presented by James Cook. It was made by Jack Maclaren with Anna Harris. The technical producer was Mike Regaard. The assistant editor is Chris Gray. The editor is Sam Bonham.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts. |
| 0:04.6 | Chris, I have some bad news. |
| 0:07.6 | Go on. |
| 0:08.7 | So we were making, as you will recall, a newscast music playlist. |
| 0:13.8 | Indeed. |
| 0:14.3 | Inspired by the King's playlist. |
| 0:16.7 | And we were asking various newscast regulars to contribute a song. |
| 0:22.0 | And you wanted a song by Shibuzi. |
| 0:24.2 | I did. Good news. Best record of 2025 so far. |
| 0:28.8 | Unfortunately, Darshini David also wanted a song by Shibuzi, |
| 0:32.6 | and in typical newscast fashion, it turns out that for copyright reasons, |
| 0:37.1 | we may have only one artist's song. |
| 0:40.3 | I see. I see where this scenario is heading. So Adam, to be clear, Adam, not me, made the executive decision to switch your song. Just before he disappeared at AWOL. He switched it to Shania Twain. |
| 0:56.1 | Oh, that's all right. |
| 0:57.4 | I can, you know, |
| 0:58.2 | good old Shania, |
| 0:59.3 | who, as you might recall, |
| 1:00.4 | James, popped up on this very podcast |
| 1:02.0 | in the last year. |
| 1:03.7 | Big moment for me. |
| 1:05.2 | I can switch to good old Shania. |
| 1:07.3 | Well, you can listen to that playlist |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.