Live in London | The Friday(ish) Update

Welcome to this week’s edition of the Friday(ish) Update, in which I give a little insight into what I’ve been up to for the past seven days.

Things have been getting very professional round here over the last week as we’ve been in London… interviewing a bunch of politicians… in Parliament.

The video we’re currently working on is about the House of Lords, the unelected upper house of the UK Parliament.

I wanted to explore why the UK continues to have a political system in which over half its politicians aren’t elected; despite us living in an age which supposedly values democracy and, specifically, the act of voting.

What is its role? What are some of the supposed benefits of such a system? And, what are the arguments for tearing it all down and replacing it with an elected upper chamber.

Early on in the project, I decided to get in touch with a member of the House of Lords who I hoped might be interested in being interviewed for the piece. This particular Baroness (as members of the House of Lords are called), despite being a member of the Lords, thinks it should be abolished—which seemed like an interesting way into this story.

When she said yes to being interviewed, I got in touch with the House of Lords press team to try and arrange a space to film the chat. In all honesty, I was expecting them to not even reply…

Instead, they really ran with the idea and we’ve ended up speaking with four different members of the House of Lords over the course of a couple of days, all with different perspectives on what the house does well, does badly, and should do differently.

It was a slightly strange experience suddenly being treated like legitimate members of the media. We spent two days going in and out of the House of Parliament, as well as a bunch more time filming stuff in the vicinity.

The interviews were also just excellent in the responses we got. Whether or not you agree with any of the particular perspectives, they’re all really fascinating and well-articulated responses; and everyone was very lovely.

We were hoping to have the video out this coming Sunday but, with all the great interviews, I think it might take a few days longer to bring it all together and make it the best that it can be.

We’ll work on getting some early bits together for early access folks shortly though so you can see what we’re working on.

Doing big trips away to get interviews like this, however, is quite pricey so thank you

Thanks as ever for your generous support and I’ll look forward to updating you more next week!!