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

Thanks so much for tuning in wherever you are in the UK and indeed around the rest of the world.

And first of all, thank you to all of those who came to the great York Literary Festival event

on Friday. It was great that there was quite a few who listened to the podcast came.

I only made the connection when they sort of spoke to me or emailed me and so on, but it was,

it was terrific and brilliantly organised by Ben Fuller. There was wine afterwards, not just for me,

but for everyone who came. Anyway, thank you so much. And that in a way is the eve of my kind of

mini tour. So on Tuesday I'm going to be in Birmingham. That's sold out with the

normal rock and roll politics, not a book festival. Then on Thursday at King's Place, and with Boris Johnson

appearing in front of the select committee on Wednesday, I'm going to be one of the themes,

unless it's a complete damp squid, which some of these things can be,

in which case we reconfigure on the spot. These shows change sometimes during the show

when fast-moving events reconfigure the areas in which we need to delve deep. We're going to look

at words and consequences. It's very interesting in politics. Words can be uttered and the

speaker can assume that there will be no consequences, that he or she will get away with the utterances.

But in the end, such as the level of scrutiny in Britain, the words do catch up with leaders.

And I won't only be reflecting on Johnson, but also on Tony Blair in relation to Iraq and

Kyr-Stama and others' words and consequences.

There'll be unreliable predictions. We always get them wrong. Question time. Oh, yeah, so much to

cram in. Oh, and the Kings Place one is streaming live. So if you can't make it, you can book a

streaming ticket, sit down with a glass of chilled white or red or beer or whiskey and join in that way and you'll

get the chance to make your unreliable predictions as well. So with all that going on,

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