And as First Minister of scotland when his party faced the latest in a series of crises. John swinney, welcome to political thinking. Lovely to be with you, thank you. It has been something of a rollercoaster six months, havent it . You retire from Front Line politics, then the First Minister of scotland is forced from office and you decide to come back into Front Line politics, come to your partys rescue. Then Rishi Sunak calls a surprise early election in the summer, then you have a bit of a kick in the general election, the westminster election. Has it all been very stomach churning . Its been absolutely a whirlwind. A whirlwind, i think is the best way to describe it, because i quite literally, in the days before Humza Yousaf resigned as First Minister, was making further plans about what would be my gentle scaling down of political activity. And i was actually on the day that he resigned, giving a reflective speech about 25 years of devolution in scotland down here in london. And
donald trump dismisses the woman who won a sexual assault case against him as a whackjob as he again claims he s the victim of a political vendetta. and from defending human rights on television to rocking out at night at eurovision, the lawyer turned pop star representing australia. and coming up on bbc news, west ham look to reach their first european final in 47 years as they take on az alkmaar in the first leg of their european conference league semifinal. good afternoon and welcome to the bbc news at one. interest rates are at their highest in 15 years, after the bank of england raised them to 4.5%, making it more expensive to borrow but better for savers. the increase is an attempt by the bank of england to curb people s spending and bring down inflation that s the rate at which prices are rising which was just over 10% in march. but the bank also upgraded the prospects for the uk economy now no longer forecasting the economy will shrink but grow modestly over t
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we actually had surprised him out of the mediaeval history section, but we are lucky he is here now. the funny thing is, we have been sat in front of the computing section, so i don t know how good yourjavascript per programming is. we will catch up with one newsnight is doing on what is happening in the general election campaign today. newscast from the bbc. hello, it s adam in birmingham. hello it s victoria in birmingham. and it s nick in birmingham. this is where you started out as a journalist. i love birmingham, i worked here in my firstjob as a report on radio, commercial radio, as you know, had no staff, i was the only reporter and comparative bbc local radio, there loads of reporters, so we were so hungry. i had sharp elbows, that s where i developed my sharp elbows. what was your favourite story from that period? it was all quite serious stuff, it was the tail end, this is showing my age, the west midlands serious crime squad and the corruption involved in that birm