Thats because James O'Brien has had very little TV work. It seems the regular presenters of BBC Newsnight are a healthy lot who do not need much cover for sickness. Of course there was the attempt at something more regular which was O'Brien on ITV. But it turned out to be too woeful even for the "chavs of daytime ITV" as our past ursine friend used to put it. Thus it was put out of its misery.

There is a first time for everything. Glad you obviously weren't nervous

TBF to J O'B. he simply never bothered to learn to drive until they had children. Before that he was comfortable with his wife being the family driver. I guess some men wouldn't be. If you live in London (or any large city with public transport) you can get by without bothering.

No, it was surprising really. After decades of listening (since 1978) it just happened. I felt the impulse and wanted to do it. I never would have believed that could happen!

Ha ha. Definitely just you. Could it be because (as I imagine) you sound like Terry Thomas?

Of course, we'll notice this all the more now!

The only certainty in life Landis is death......somethings going to get us whether it be red meat, alcohol, tobacco, drugs, terrorists, bad drivers, suicidal pilots.......Chinese & US pollution.
I think electric cars are a long way off, especially for those of us who live well away from major cities, for these main reasons.
1. Image…..a friend of mine has a Tesla, which looks really cool, apart from that most electric cars are ugly, boring & slow……like a golf cart
2. Lack of range…..the Nissan Leaf does only 84 miles on a full charge which means you'll break down 150 miles before you get to Cornwall 😳
3. Lack of charging points…….11k charging points yet 30m registered UK vehicles
4. Charging time……best 3-4 hours, average 6-8
5. Cost…..a crappy looking Nissan Leaf is £26k and the Tesla is £58k

Electric cars are a great idea, but at the moment they are about as useful as ‘t*ts on a bull’

Ferarri in full lazy mode this morning.
Can't be bothered to think about a new story?
Not a problem, just have a go at the overseas development budget and thump the desk a few times and for added outrage keep mentioning "what about our own people"?
He knows his core audience.

NF has made his thoughts known on the aid budget for some years.
I have to agree with him that so much of the £12bn is wasted on bribes and backhanders to despots, dictators and country's with space programmes.......it's a complete joke

He really is an A-hole. By all means ask for a full audit of expenditure, yet have some humanity about necessary funding. Despots won't fund disease prevention - that is why the West steps in.

Can't NF (how apt are his initials) be repatriated back to Italy for his final few years??

Why are Africa's corruption problems our problems?
You don't see other African countries helping out other African countries, in the same way that Saudi Arabia has taken zero Syrian refugees......Islam, the religion of peace, yeah right.
We have thousands of people living on the streets, we have OAP's scared to turn their heating on, we have food banks.
We have a duty to look after our own first, complain to Africans & Arabs so that they play their part.
I think Ferraris forefathers are actually Swiss rather than Italian.

Then it's down to the minister responsible for the budget to ensure its targeted properly.
So far NF has not even mentioned the name of the cabinet minister responsible.
That minister is Priti Patil but looks like she is above criticism as she's a Tory and a hard line Brexiter.
Ferarri really is a joke.

I think this has been one of his long term bugbears and while he promotes it in his usual hamfisted way I think there is a point to be discussed.

I'm just wondering when he got the job of promoting the Fox (Murdoch) takeover of Sky? What has the amount of tax that Sky pay got to do with anything?

Do you not consider our overseas expenditure budget an issue?

If it's not Brexit I guess it's a lazy show then.

Hmmm

Why would we repatriate a man who works hard and is very good at his job? Getting LBC's highest listenership by some way, is quite a feat don't you think?

Incidentally, he is right re: overseas funding of course. Africa is a money pit of enormous proportions. Even the caller who was from Africa admitted that.

Those two crooks Cameron & Osborne wanted to ring fence our £12bn overseas aid budget and INCREASE it year on year when there were calamitous cuts to UK services going on everywhere in social care, mental health, Border force, Police forces......what an utter scandal.

I think Ms Patel sees the folly in such nonsense and is looking for 'value' from aid rather than just chucking money around at any Tom, Dick or Vickram that has a begging bowl in his hand.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016...asted-on-supe/

The overseas aid budget is 0.7% of government spending.
Think of it this way. if spending was a total of £1 then the total spent on overseas aid is less than one penny of the total spending.
Of course it could be targeted better but that's down to the department responsible.

Well you can always listen to JOB who will no doubt take the social care debate to an even more ridiculous level - I caught about 30 seconds yesterday and he seemed to think it was the fault if Farage and Trump.

As for foreign aid perhaps the answer is less aid and more trade - but then some people want us to live in a protectionist club that places tariffs on goods from these poorer countries and forces us to buy our food from subsidised European farmers instead.

We have been trying the foreign aid route for decades and it's got us no further forward. Heaven help us when there are another 1 billion people in Africa in 25 years time!

Lies Damn Lies.......and statistics

Percentages don't really mean much when you are talking such huge numbers.
It's a great lefty, liberal trick designed to look insignificant, 0.7% looks so insignificant, might as well up it to 0.9%.......what tight arses we are.

Let's look at it another, more meaningful way.
The average wage in the UK is £25k per annum, the average individual would therefore pay around £2,900 in income tax, after allowances.
Our foreign aid bill is £12,000,000,000 per annum
This is equivalent to the income tax of 4,137,931 working people simply being GIVEN AWAY that's over 4 million people's taxes being given away, with very few checks and balances on how or where it is being spent, doesn't look so insignificant when expressed that way, does it?

Only listened to J O'B's opening gambit. He started his same old wrung out provocative rhetoric, "you can blame the immigrants for the NHS" ... "but only the ones in this country". The narrative is so tired, and lazy. Should 'we' buy him a new drum to bang on for Christmas?

And central government funding for elderly and disabled social care is an Even smaller percentage!

Well said, Phoebe!

He ignores the £65 billion a year we spend on housing benefit and tax credits to subsidise low wage jobs and high housing rents due to our race to the bottom low wage economy and the massive demand for housing. Neither of which could possibly be correlated with having more and more people in the country!

If we scrapped tax credits - how did we cope before they were introduced 15 years ago - we could increase spending on elderly social care by nearly 400 per cent! Should we prioritise our most vulnerable or continue to subsidise cheap labour employers.

We are nearly £2 trillion in debt and all JOBs ranting won't change that - what is your answer rather than blaming our social care crisis on Farage and Donald Trump!

Then pressure central government to increase funding.
Let's start by actually collecting the 34 b of tax which goes uncollected annually.
Let's stop paying UK pensioners living in Spain a heating allowance.
I know that your ukip thinking believes that the foreign aid budget will pay for everything in the country but it an it so.

Why?
Let's look at the billions of tax that goes uncollected. About 34b per annum