House of Comments - Episode 59 - Five Days in May

Episode 59 of the House of Comments podcast "Five Days in May" was recorded on Sunday and was out yesterday. This week myself and Emma Burnell were joined by Labour activist and blogger Hopi Sen to discuss Andrew Adonis' "5 Days in May" about the coalition negotiations from Labour's perspective, Loongate and the Tories incipient nervous breakdown over Europe and equal marriage.

You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes here (note - this is a new feed so if you used to subscribe to the old feed a couple of years ago you'll need to do so again).

Other podcasting software e.g. for Android can be pointed here to subscribe.

You can download the mp3 for the latest episode directly from here.

Or you can listen to the embedded episode below here:

listen to ‘Episode 59 - Five Days in May’ on Audioboo

If you are a political blogger and wish to be considered as a future guest please drop me an e-mail at markreckons@live.co.uk.

Any feedback welcomed in the comments below.


PS: A big thanks to Audioboo for hosting the podcast for us and especially to Audioboo's James O'Malley who has helped us out getting relaunched. James is also editor of The Pod Delusion podcast which is about "interesting things" and is well worth a listen too! We would also like to thank Kevin MacLeod from Incompetech.com for our theme music.

House of Comments - Episode 45 - Europe - The Final Countdown?

Episode 45 of the House of Comments podcast "Europe - The Final Countdown?" was recorded on Sunday and is out today. This week myself and Emma Burnell were joined by UKIP head of press Gawain Towler to discuss Cameron's announcement of an in/out EU referendum in 5 years time, the intemperate comments of Lib Dem MP David Ward about Israel and the blacklisting scandal.

Around 10 minutes in for a few minutes the sound goes slightly echoey. We sorted it out after that but apologies. It gets better if you listen on!

You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes here (note - this is a new feed so if you used to subscribe to the old feed a couple of years ago you'll need to do so again).

Other podcasting software e.g. for Android can be pointed here to subscribe.

You can download the mp3 for the latest episode directly from here.

Or you can listen to the embedded episode below here:

listen to ‘Episode 45 - Europe - The Final Countdown’ on Audioboo

If you are a political blogger and wish to be considered as a future guest please drop me an e-mail at markreckons@live.co.uk.

Any feedback welcomed in the comments below.


PS: A big thanks to Audioboo for hosting the podcast for us and especially to Audioboo's James O'Malley who has helped us out getting relaunched. James is also editor of The Pod Delusion podcast which is about "interesting things" and is well worth a listen too! We would also like to thank Kevin MacLeod from Incompetech.com for our theme music.

EU Integration Test

I have just taken the EU Integration test. There are 30 questions and it attempts to gauge where you are on a graph where the axes are anti-pro EU integration on one and left-right socioeconomic on the other. Some of the questions do not allow enough nuance for my liking. For example one of them asks if the EU should have more powers and another asks if they should be able to raise taxes. I am not keen on either of those things but if there was proper democratic reform of the European institutions, I might be. Doubtless my responses to these moved me more towards anti-EU

Interestingly according to the results I am moderately anti-EU and am somewhere between the Tories and the Greens:


For the record, I do not consider myself to be anti-EU. I do have a problem with the way in which the structures are not properly democratically accountable and I really think that the Lisbon treaty should be ratified in the UK through a referendum because all 3 main parties said it would happen. We are however much better off in the EU than outside of it and it is generally a force for good in my view.

Iain Dale is apparently slap bang on the UKIP tag and Tim Montgomerie from Con Home is also hovering dangerously close to them too!

I would be interested to see where other Lib Dems are on this graph.

Caroline Flint - speed reader

Following the recent revelation that Caroline Flint had not read the Lisbon Treaty, John Rentoul of The Independent reported yesterday that the situation had been remedied.

It really should not have taken embarassment like this to force the Europe Minister to actually read the treaty that Parliament has assented to on our behalf. She has had six months to get up to speed with it and I would argue that it should have been the very first thing she did on day one!

I am curious to know what other things have been deemed a higher priority for her to read until now.