The Week Unwrapped: Australia, Egypt and the British Virgin Islands

Are the BVIs as corrupt as their former governor claims? Is Egypt any closer to democracy? And will the sun set on Australia Day?

Tahrir Square, Cairo, Egypt
(Image credit: SpaceX)

Olly Mann and The Week delve behind the headlines and debate what really matters from the past seven days.

To get six free issues of The Week magazine and a moleskine notebook visit theweek.co.uk/offer and enter promo code: pod25

In this week’s episode, we discuss:

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Taxing times

Diplomats moving around the UK's overseas foreign territories rarely make headlines. But the outgoing governor of the British Virgin Islands this week left with a bang when he publicly denounced a “plague” of corruption among the island's ruling elite. With the EU threatening to blacklist the BVI as a tax haven, the UK has deployed a senior British judge to investigate the allegations. So is there trouble brewing in paradise?

Egypt’s wait

Ten years after mass protests in Cairo’s Tahrir Square forced Hosni Mubarak from office, sparking protests in several other Middle Eastern capitals, democracy still seems a distant hope for most in the region. Yet the setbacks, some of them serious, have not completely erased the sense of optimism that accompanied the original demonstrations - and many hope that freedom has only been delayed.

Invasion day

For some Australians, the country’s national holiday - Australia Day - is little more than an opportunity to go to the beach and have a barbecue with friends. But for the country’s indigenous community, the annual celebration, which marks the arrival of the British in 1788, represents brutal colonisation, including massacres, the removal of their children and dispossession of their land. Now a campaign to change the date of Australia Day, if not abolish it altogether, is gathering momentum.

You can subscribe to The Week Unwrapped on the Global Player, Apple podcasts, SoundCloud or wherever you get you get your podcasts.

Continue reading for free

We hope you're enjoying The Week's refreshingly open-minded journalism.

Subscribed to The Week? Register your account with the same email as your subscription.