Amol Rajan

speaker

3,997 appearances 23 recordings 6 series first heard Feb 2026 last heard 16 Jul

Amol Rajan’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

Trend

recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 23 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 12.

Appearances

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Radical · Last Call for the Local: Are Old Pubs the Solution to Modern Crises? (Oisín Rogers) · 25 Jun 2026 podcast

Do you feel there's also a sort of cultural undercurrent, which is drinking less, drinking at home, and the kind of, I mean, I'm slightly loading this question because I'm slightly obsessed with it, the kind of atomisation of society. matched

We've got a loneliness epidemic, lots of people scrolling alone on their smartphones, but kind of just a decline in the feeling that kind of a good thing to do on a Thursday night is to head down to the local. matched

Right. matched

I want to dive into this in actually as much detail as you're comfortable with, because I think there's a lot of people who don't necessarily understand drinking. matched

When you go through that long list, VAT, rates, employer, NI, wages, inflation, what are you talking about? matched

To the extent you're comfortable, can you just give us a typical pub? matched

Say you're a pub in, as it happens, on the outskirts of London, suburban. matched

What are you paying weekly on the rates? matched

What are business rates? matched

What are you paying on VAT? matched

And how is it changing? matched

And how does that affect your margin? matched

To the extent you're comfortable with, I want some detail on what has actually happened on the finances of the pubs. matched

It won't. matched

When people are paying £6, how much is going to the pub and how much is going to the government? matched

What difference would it make to pubs if VAT was significantly cut, say from 20% to 10%? matched

The first thing this government sort of, in the first budget that Rachel Reeves had, she said, we've got a big fiscal black hole, we've got to find a way to fund it. matched

And one of the ways in which this government, which we should say, we're speaking shortly after Keir Starmer resigned as Prime Minister, Rachel Reeves basically raised over £20 billion by increasing employer national insurance. matched

And if you've got pubs that have got a margin of what's a 2%, basically just the employer national insurance change itself can completely wipe out that 2%. matched

So that affects everything. matched

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