There is now thriving connection between Pensioners for Indy and IndyLive Radio. Two of our Greater Glasgow Group members, Val Gauld and Marlene Halliday, co-host the Daytime Show on IndyLive Radio!
It all started off when …..
… Marlene was invited into the studio to talk about Pensioners for Independence. The radio studio is in central Glasgow and soon Marlene got Val to go along too. Kevin Gibney, the founder of IndyLive Radio, was very encouraging. And before long they were working with him, inviting guests along to talk about a range of themes, in charge of the sound deck, and playing music tracks. Well to be fair, it was mostly Val who looked after the music side of things. Marlene is a bit clueless about any music written after 1970.
Early in 2020 they set up a series interviews on the Climate Emergency talking with climate activists and with people thinking about what impact an independent Scotland could make on the need to turn the emergency around.
As it turned out that was the last time they were in the IndyLive Studio.
Broadcasting during a pandemic
Then the lockdown happened and the studio was out of bounds.
It took Kevin a few weeks to set up the station to work using remote streaming but soon after that Val and Marlene were back on air. Since then they have been interviewing guests on Zoom, and streaming live to the station from Marlene’s laptop. No slouches when it comes to technology!
Over the next weeks a small core team developed at IndyLive Radio, looking after the technical glitches, making programmes, and inviting guests, expanding the range of programmes, and starting up CatchUp channels so that people can listen in later.
Podcasting…
Sometime in April Marlene thought it would be a good idea to write down a few reflections about living in the pandemic. By this time she had learned enough about audio editing to make it into a podcast called The Corona Diaries. The podcast has been running on IndyLive Radio every week since then. And round about the same time Val started a series of programmes called Women’s Voices. It was also around this time that they also started podcasting for Pensioners4Indy.
Broadcasting Pensioners for Indy…
If you look back on this blog you’ll find a post called Our Stall in Milngavie This was our first podcast from a recording Marlene made talking to passers-by in the weeks before the Dec2019 General election. Another two podcasts came came from an invitation to Mary McCabe of the Glasgow Group to be a guest on the Daytime Show. The recording from Mary’s live guest appearance was later split into two shorter programmes and put up on the IndyLive Soundcloud Channel. These three became the first of what is now a pretty extensive set of Pensioner 4Indy podcasts which are broadcast every week on IndyLive Radio.
Ironically the extensiveness of the podcast series owes a lot to the pandemic. Not being able to meet in person, our groups – like many others in the Yes Movement – have been meeting via online platforms like Zoom. It is easy to record these meetings and then, sometimes with a bit of judicious editing, we have another podcast with a speaker and usually with Q&As as well. We have an hour’s slot every week on IndyLive Radio for our podcasts. They are also available on several OnDemand websites like Soundcloud and Podbean. And promotion images are posted on Twitter and Facebook. Like this one:
Currently the P4Indy podcasts have been listened to over 3000 times! We always post each podcast here in our blog. You can find them in top menu 👆. And there is a Pensioners for Indy Podcast playlist here:
If you have any ideas for podcasts, let us know in the Comments section and we’ll what we can do.
Are you aware that in an independent Scotland, the state pension would be Scotland’s responsibility, this would not be paid by WM. Are you prepared to have your pension decimated? Don’t believe the lies.
Hi Margaret
Well Scots’ State Pensions are already the responsibility of Scots, we pay our national insurance to be eligible for our pensions and it’s by all Scots paying their taxes to the London Treasury that our pensions arrive in our bank accounts every month. Our pensions aren’t a wee present from our generous English neighbours.
Have a look at our pension info leaflet. You can find it here: https://pensionersforindependence.scot/our-pensions-leaflet/