On this final programme of the series we try to give some context to some of the issues that are being discussed during the current election campaign.
Who pays tax?
What proportion of adults are paying income tax? How much are they paying? Where does the highest burden lay? We take a look. Also, we look at the different political parties? tax policies. This includes corporation tax, but what about National Insurance?
How do you cut migration?
The Conservative manifesto again includes the aim to lower net migration to tens of thousands. How has this aim fared in the last six years? And what could the Conservatives do in future years to achieve their goal? We also take a look at what impact that might have on the economy.
Taking the nations? temperature
Summer has arrived ? but we cast our minds to the chilly months ahead and think about the Winter Fuel Payment. The Conservatives are proposing to change this to a means-tested system ? everywhere except Scotland. Is this because Scotland is colder than the rest of the UK? BBC Weather Man Phil Avery has the answer.
Free School Meals
It?s been a popular topic in party manifestos - free school meals. Jamie Oliver thinks school dinners are essential for fighting obesity ? but is there really a case to be made for the health benefits of a school lunch? Emily Tanner from the National Centre for Social Research puts the case for and against Universal Free School Meals ? while munching a pie and a packed lunch.
If it's Friday, it's a current events episode, and if it's current events, we're probably talking about Donald Trump. We begin, however, with a hopefully infrequent segment about stuff Andrew gets wrong. In this case, patron Sean Keehan corrects Andrew's numbers regarding Congressional votes. After that, we answer the actual legal question behind #covfefe -- namely, whether Donald Trump can delete his Tweets. The answer... might surprise you! In our main segment, we look at the ongoing Senate investigation regarding Trump's ties with Russia and break down the Congress's power to conduct investigations and issue subpoenas, and the reasons people can give for failing to comply with them. After that, fan favorite Breakin' Down the Law returns with the question on everyone's lips: is it legal for Kathy Griffin to have posed with Donald Trump's severed head? Finally, we end with a brand new (and tricky) Thomas Takes the Bar Exam question #25 about the admissibility of a composite sketch after the primary witness has unexpectedly died. Remember that TTTBE issues a new question every Friday, followed by the answer on next Tuesday's show. Don't forget to play along by following our Twitter feed (@Openargs) and/or our Facebook Page and quoting the Tweet or Facebook Post that announces this episode along with your guess and reason(s)! Recent Appearances: None! Have us on your show! Show Notes & Links
Andrew first made the erroneous claim regarding voting results in Episode #54 on Gerrymandering, and repeated it in Episode #72. Oops.
There’s a small matter I trip over regularly in the Allusionist: Dates. Not the fruit.
Specicially, the terms BC and AD, Before Christ and Anno Domini (‘the year of the Lord’ (‘the Lord’ also being Christ)). How did Jesus Christ get to be all up in our system of counting the years?
In April, Donald Trump authorized rocket strikes on a military target in Syria. Most Democrats agreed with it. But when Trump makes a decision, does that make it inherently wrong? New Republic editor and Twitter star Jeet Heer offers a critique of the first few months of Democratic resistance. He wrote about it in the magazine last month.
Today’s Spiel comes from the archives: For President Trump, you’re nobody until you’re somebody. And then, you’re not just anybody—you’re everybody.
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As Trump prepares to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement, Jon and Dan talk about the consequences with one of the deal’s chief negotiators, Brian Deese. Then, they break down the politics of the decision, catch up on the latest Russia developments, and talk with Ana Marie Cox about Trump’s decision to rollback birth control coverage under Obamacare.
The answer is satisfyingly full of toothy prehistoric beasts.
Reported by Daniel Potter. Bay Curious is Olivia Allen-Price, Vinnee Tong, Paul Lancour, Suzie Racho, Penny Nelson and Jessica Placzek. Theme music by Pat Mesiti-Miller.
Ask us a question at BayCurious.org.
Follow Olivia Allen-Price on Twitter @oallenprice.
You’ve probably seen them while driving around town –- those handwritten signs next to the road with messages like: “We buy houses for cash! Call now!” What are they about, and why?
“Borders,” says Mary Bosworth, “are the key issue of our time.” And so, says the criminologist, “in response to the mass migration that’s happening, the criminal justice system is shifting. This shouldn’t surprise us – all other aspects of our society are changing.”
One of those changes is the creation of a new subfield of criminology, one explicitly evolved to understand immigration control and criminal justice. In this Social Science Bites podcast interview with Dave Edmonds, Bosworth talks about a field which she calls ‘border criminology.’
She starts the conversation by explaining that even the name of the field is a bit unsettled. Bosworth notes a couple of other terms making the rounds, including ‘crimmigration’ – coined by Juliet Stumpf -- and ‘criminology of mobility.’ The latter, she adds, doesn’t capture way that it’s the movement of people that’s being criminalized, and so “that doesn’t work quite so well in English.
“Border criminology as a term, I think, captures more clearly the way in which this is a field of study which is trying to understand both things that are happening at the border but also things that are happening n our criminal justice system.”
One of the main takeaways from her research has been that these detention centers are “very painful places for all the people concerned” – whether detainees and the officers. The officers themselves often “don’t fully understand what they’re doing” and “don’t have a clear narrative” of the population they are detaining, which runs from criminals to visa overstayers to people who just don’t have any papers.
As an academic who once did research in prisons, Bosworth finds “the detention estate is much more recent and politicized -- and doesn’t have tradition of letting researchers in.”
As someone who has been allowed in, Bosworth says she’s found policymakers are interested in hearing her results, but less so on acting on them. A “counternarraitive” on the threat posed by immigrants has created headwinds, she finds, that make reforming policy difficult despite the documented fiscal and human costs of the present system.
In this interview, she also describes the emotional toll on this sort of filed work, and some of the brighter spots of her efforts, such as creating an archive of artwork made by detainees.
Bosworth is a professor and fellow of St. Cross College at the University of Oxford and concurrently a professor at Australia’s Monash University. She’s the director of the interdisciplinary research group Border Criminologies and assistant director of the Center for Criminology at Oxford. She’s currently heads both a five-year project on “Subjectivity, Identity and Penal Power: Incarceration in a Global Age” funded by the European Research Council as well as a Leverhulme International Network on external border control.
