Forgive the brevity of this week’s shownotes, but it looks horribly like the British government might finally be about to get that election everyone’s been threatening for ages, and we’re all going to be terribly busy.

So: this week, I finally invited someone I should have asked years ago onto the podcast. Anoosh Chakelian is a long time colleague of mine at the New Statesman – she joined the staff literally two days before I did – whose work focuses largely on public services and the state of the public realm. She also earlier this year replaced Helen Lewis as co-host of the main NS podcast, on which she is doing an excellent job.

Anoosh joins me to talk about a subject very dear to her heart: outdoor gyms, which offer free community classes, and many of which are now under threat. While she’s around we also chat about austerity, London’s best parks, and why west London is not frankly very good.

The episode itself is below. You can subscribe to the podcast on Acast, iTunes, or RSS. Enjoy.

Jonn Elledge is the editor of CityMetric. He is on Twitter as @jonnelledge and on Facebook as JonnElledgeWrites.

Skylines is produced by Nick Hilton.