James Ball

Because in order to create a beautiful learning environment for you, dear listeners, we have to trawl the very depths of the Internet.

I'm joined, as always, by political editor for The New World, James Ball.

How are we, James?

uh great thanks elizabeth how are you

And it's produced, at least on my side of the internet, some brilliant memes, some hilarious edits.

But I still get the sense, based on conversations I have in real life, based on the things I see, and my own lack of knowledge about this, I don't think we really understand who she is, what it was, why it was such a scandal.

So I've asked my very good and old friend, old being the operative word, James Ball, to explain to me how did we get here?

And there's nothing more that 40-year-old men like than explaining things patronisingly to younger women.

He is political editor at The New World and he's got the thousand yard stare of a man who's speed red bank job by Liz Truss.

Hello James Ball.

Are you with us James? Sir, the deep state won't let me answer that.

And completing the panel, he's the former congressional staffer turned associate professor of the George Washington University's Graduate School of Political Management.

It makes me feel like I'm seeking enchantment again, which again is the point of the book.

Fantastic.

James Ball, what cacophonous, horrible music have you been listening to or whatever the direct opposite?

I worry mine's far less charming.

13 years ago, I was working for The Guardian editing a series called The Big Energy Debate, which was looking largely at energy security.

And actually, James Ball, one of the – friend of the pod, member of the pod – wrote a massive data dive for me all about what it was telling us about energy security.

It was clear then that something had to change urgently or we were going to end up with shutdowns.

Well, look, here we are now where the government is basically saying you need to have three days food and water in the house because there may be energy issues that shut the supply chain for up to three days.

The Netherlands Cybersecurity Agency is practicing what it's preached, taking its own website offline because of the PHP flaws.

Let's talk now to James Ball, who's a technology journalist and author.

James, thank you so much for being with us to help us explain this story tonight.

Let's go back to basics.

Gotcha.

And that's h-how we found it this time, through people deploying AI tools to, to help spot these things.

James Ball, thank you very much.

Let's turn to Ciaran Martin, who was the founding chief executive of the National Cybersecurity Centre, part of GCHQ in twenty sixteen.

Hello and welcome to Touching Grass, the podcast from the New World magazine in which only one of the regular team is called Matt and we don't even let him speak while we're recording.

I'm political editor James Ball and I'm joined this week, like every week, by the rock to my sisyphus, New World staff writer Lucy Reade.

Lucy Reade, how are you on this fine, wonderful morning?

I like that.

You know, he's, he's deliberately not being provocative or confrontational.

So given this issue, I wonder whether he'll try and steer a path through it because, like, I mean, James Ball was on this podcast when the High Court passed that EHRC ruling about gender, and he said it's a completely unworkable piece of legislation.

It absolutely cannot work.

So there remains a problem, and that's where I think maybe that's where Burnham can get in and go, "Okay, let's see if we can solve this," but not via a fight.

We're fine.

I'm James Ball, political editor of The New World, and I'm fine.

I'm joined as ever by my co-host, staff writer Lucy Reade.

How are you, Lucy? Are you fine? I'm fine.

Did you mean that we were codependent on each other or that we're codependent on the internet?

Yes.

Well, that is true because James has been away at Tory conference this week.

So I've been all on my loan.

Well, I have to ask you about a couple of things, particularly the pause in the middle when he just seemed to be genuinely overtaken with emotion, 'cause he was about to mention his dad, um, who's just passed away, a- a- as is widely known, was suffering so badly from dementia that he never e- knew that his son had become prime minister.

And James Ball was saying on our emergency podcast, a lot of people who were only listening on audio thought that the link had gone down.

Yeah [laughs].

But watching it on screen, you could see what happened, and you could see, you could feel, as you might at a gig, feel the audience kind of willing him to get back in his groove.

So we thought we'd get something out quick.

And joining me is a man who was there on the spot in Liverpool, James Ball, columnist for The New World.

He's been in Liverpool at the start of this week.

Hello, James.

Wow.

Actual history.

James Ball, thanks so much for getting up early to discuss this momentous speech.

Good talking to you.

Hello and welcome to Touching Grass, the podcast where the hosts both clearly didn't have enough parental supervision over their electronics growing up and now everyone is paying the price for it.

I'm staff writer at The New World, Lucy Reade, and I'm joined as always by our political editor and my only friend, James Ball.

Who are we today, James, with your very, very sparkly, swanky background.

For those of you watching on video, James does not have a pre-made Zoom background.