URN

Here's a link to the second Big Picture of the 2012/13 academic year. In it, the panel talks about the US Presidential elections so far and the major political party conferences. They also display superhuman skills of brevity in discussing the controversy that is university contact hours on arts and humanities courses!

You can listen in here: http://urn1350.net/podcast/28

Remember, you can listen to the Big Picture live every week of term on Wednesdays from 6pm to 7pm. Feel free to comment below if anything we've said catches your ear or raises your spleen.

David and the Big Picture team.

Have a listen to our first show of the 2012-13 academic year here: http://urn1350.net/podcast/28

On this week's show the Big Picture panel features newcomers Elliot, Sebastian and Robert, who sparred with veteran panellist Jonny over the nature of last summer's explosion of patriotic spirit, the latest Cabinet reshuffle, Nick Clegg's apology video, and the trouble with tuition fees.

We did have some fairly major sound issues in the first debate, and whilst we've tried to correct them for the podcast there are ongoing issues with background noise and fading whenever Jonny or I were speaking in the first debate. We managed to fix it for the second and third discussions, though, so stick with it!

DH

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Have an opinion about anything on this podcast? Post a comment below, and then listen in Wednesdays 6-7pm to comment on our debates live!

This was the first part of the Big Picture's interview with the Labour MP for Nottingham South, Lilian Greenwood. In a wide ranging discussion, we began by asking her about the Labour Party's acceptance that it cannot reverse all government cuts and the UK economy in general.

We moved on to ask her what a future Labour government would do about the rise in tuition fees given that so far less people have applied for university this year.

We asked her why she supported Nottingham City Council's passage of Article 4 on student housing and the wider issue of students living in the different communities of Nottingham.

With youth unemployment now over 1 million, we asked what she was doing to get people back into work in the Nottingham area.

With experience as a trade unionist, we asked whether or not public sector workers were right to go on strike over their pensions and the possibility of further strike action in the future.

Bankers bonuses has remained a sensitive topic amongst politicians and the wider public, we asked whether she felt it was right that Fred Goodwin had his knighthood stripped of him and the bigger issue of regulating British banks.

We finished off the interview by asking what being an MP was like.

Listen again to our outside broadcast, a special edition of the Big Picture. This week's show broadcast live from the Portland Building with a panel of University Staff, featuring Professor Andreas Bieler, Gulshan Khan and Mark Stuart from the School of Politics as well as Professor Christopher Phelps from the American Studies Department. Our panel were joined by an audience who offered their views within the debate. We discussed student's engagement with British politics, the right to protest, Britain's relationship with the European Union and freedom of speech within the media. It made a well informed, lively debate which we all thoroughly enjoyed. Many thanks to everyone who came.

Feel free to leave comments below, enjoy!

Our panel discussed Chancellor George Osbourne's Autumn Statement on the UK economy delivered on Tuesday 29th November. We discussed the downgraded forescasts for growth, infrastructure projects and public sector job losses.