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Drinking Swamp Broth and why our Police Forces are Failing Us
Peter Hitchens hates to be blunt about these things, well, not really, but he’d really like to know why the police are so useless. And not in one specific instance or area, but generally. No coppers on the beat, rarely answering emergency calls and heaven forfend they actually bang someone up. What happened to policing in the UK? While Sarah has spent her week at a wellness centre (don’t call it a fat farm), and while she has returned glowing like a rare gem, she did manage to put some weight on. But did a week of wheatgrass colonics, waddling about and living on liquids take her to some higher spiritual ground? Possibly… On our reading list this week: · The Abolition of Liberty – Peter Hitchens · Broken Windows: The Police and Neighborhood Safety - George L. Kelling and James Q. Wilson · The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma Paperback – M.D. Bessel van der Kolk To get in touch, email: [email protected], you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on Whatsapp – on 07796 657512, start your message with the word ‘alas’. Take our show survey at: https://ex-plorsurvey.com/survey/selfserve/550/g517/250305?list=9 Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens Producer: Philip Wilding Editor: Chelsey Moore Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini Executive Producer: Jamie East A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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43:28
Keep Your Enemies Close and Cross My Palm With Silver
Peter Hitchens puts forward his defence of ‘Whataboutery and asks why does the west delight in attacking its current enemies like Putin for things it allows its friends like Tayip Erdogan to do with impunity? What is it with all this posturing hypocrisy? While Sarah makes the case for the ancient art of astrology and wonders if we’re looking at star signs for answers as conventional faith is failing us daily. Or, as she puts it, what makes your sky fairy more important than my sky fairy? She may have a point. On our reading list this week: · The Water Babies: A Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby - Charles Kingsley · The Roads to Freedom – Jean-Paul Sartre · The Voyage of the Dawn Treader – C.S. Lewis To get in touch, email: [email protected], you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on Whatsapp – on 07796 657512, start your message with the word ‘alas’. Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens Producer: Philip Wilding Editor: Chelsey Moore Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini Executive Producer: Jamie East A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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42:49
Power Corrupted PMs and Peter Hitchens almost meets Prince Charles
All human life is here. Dogma, closed minds, modern slavery, net zero and why Peter will never enter the House of Lords - though he will take tea there – and why you’ll never find letters after his name. Sarah asks why Labour are pushing for a new deal with China at the risk of human rights violation and why did Margaret Thatcher think you could drive the 5 plus miles from Downing Street to Dulwich – turns out, outriders on motorbikes help. And both wonder when did the honours system become such an ‘inverted pyramid of piffle’? Word for word. On our reading list this week: · HMS Ulysses – Alistair MacLean · The Iron Lady: Margaret Thatcher: From Grocer’s Daughter to Iron Lady – John Campbell · The People’s Trilogy - Frank Dikötter To get in touch, email: [email protected], you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on Whatsapp – on 07796 657512, start your message with the word ‘alas’. Take our show survey at: https://ex-plorsurvey.com/survey/selfserve/550/g517/250305?list=9 Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens Producer: Philip Wilding Editor: Chelsey Moore Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini Executive Producer: Jamie East A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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39:45
Does My Bomb Look Big in This?
To paraphrase Edwin Starr; work, what is it good for, absolutely nothing… At least according to Gen Z. Reports suggest that a whole generation might be ready to give up work, which, coincidentally, is how Peter felt every day as a younger man when he was mucking out pigs on the farm, while Sarah’s eighteen-hour days in Hobbs only finally relented when she found herself talking to a drunken sub editor in a pub who was baffled by his new mac at work, just as Sarah had learnt how to use one… Elsewhere, we take to the seas as Peter asks why our submariners are spending over 200 days underwater at a time and why do we cling to the notion that we need a cold war superweapon like the atomic bomb and what really happens when you try to launch a Trident missile at sea? Nothing good, apparently. And what tests do you have to pass if, God forbid, you have to stand in for the PM one day? On our reading list this week: · Simple Subs Book – Leslie Sellers · The Silent Deep: The Royal Navy Submarine Service Since 1945 – James Jinks & Peter Hennessy · The Hunt For Red October - Tom Clancy To get in touch, email: [email protected], you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on Whatsapp – on 07796 657512, start your message with the word ‘alas’. Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens Producer: Philip Wilding Editor: Chelsey Moore Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini Executive Producer: Jamie East A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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38:50
Covid Tomatoes, Diplomatic Camels, and Our Kind of Despot
Lockdown saw Peter Hitchens riding through Hyde Park in a Polish gas mask hissing the word ‘virus’ at strangers. Sarah Vine spent hers in Waitrose checking produce until an outraged fellow shopper saw her return over ripe veg to the shelves and accuse her of spreading ‘covid tomatoes!’. Whatever they are. Both struggled with lockdown – especially as Sarah was sharing a home with Michael Gove, who was very much behind his Party’s policy to close things down – but, five years later, what did they make of the seismic period when Britain turned out the lights? Also, Peter asks why the hell can’t the west stay out of other country’s business, unless those despots or dictators can make life easier for us? It’s enough to make cynics of us all. On our reading list this week: · Lockdown Secrets – Eleanor Tattersfield · Catch Your Breath – Ed Patrick · The Great War For Civilisation – Robert Fisk To get in touch, email: [email protected], you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on Whatsapp – on 07796 657512, start your message with the word ‘alas’. Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens Producer: Philip Wilding Editor: Chelsey Moore Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini Executive Producer: Jamie East A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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38:24

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About Alas Vine & Hitchens

What's the Big Idea? Finally, Sarah Vine (once memorably described as being ‘like and loathed in equal measure, divisive, but never indecisive’) and Peter Hitchens (a man whose writing a critic was called to compare to a Guardsman’s boot: ‘as highly polished and potentially lethal’) meet once a week to look at the world and mutter, alas… Acclaimed columnist and journalist Sarah Vine and best-selling author and broadcaster Peter Hitchens discuss and dissect social, economic, and pop cultural flotsam and jetsam that have risen out of the dark waters of that week’s news. Taking one big idea each episode and pulling it apart with élan, imagine Vine and Hitchens respective columns brought to life and then skewered, scoffed at, debated, and given the full weight of Vine and Hitchens impenetrable gaze. Though an accord might not always be reached, it’s the journey that matters. Whether it’s the tech bros gone rogue – Meta tearing up its own rule book on fact checking, Musk attempting to influence governmental policy, or the knotty subject on society’s ever-increasing reliance on anti-depressants to treat what might just be the modern malaise and not depression at all. Or, evil, nature or nurture? Does evil actually exist or is it an idea that hangs over us, or do we just sometime embody it and the actions themselves are evil, not the individual? All this and more are to be pored over, one towering topic each week discussed with humour, insight, and real understanding. Take part in our listener survey here: https://ex-plorsurvey.com/survey/selfserve/550/g517/250305?list=9#? To get in touch email [email protected], you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on WhatsApp - on 07796 657512 start your message with the word 'alas' Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens Producer: Phillip Wilding Editor: Chelsey Moore Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini Executive Producer: Jamie East A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular

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