Rachel Reeves' big speech on growth. We ask where was Scotland in the raft of major projects? Hard on the heels of this came the shock, not to anyone who'd been paying attention, news that the CEO of GB Energy, Juergen Maier, could not only give no date for the £300 reduction in consumer bills promised by Labour at the General Election but also that the one thousand Scottish jobs would take around 20 years to materialise. Sticking with Labour is there another U-turn on policy in the pipeline despite the Court of Session ruling by Lord Ericht putting a stop on oil and gas production in the Rosebank and Jackdaw fields? Will Starmer side with Rachel Reeves, the GMB and Scottish Labour, and give the go ahead to drill? Or will Ed Milliband stand up to those voices and refuse to issue new licences? We, in the light of listener Simon Brooke's excellent contribution, re-examine the validity of the claims made by the industry on so called sustainable aviation fuel? Donald Trump has called time out on his plans to impose tariffs on Canada and Mexico. What's the reality behind the bluster? What's in store for the UK and the EU? Lesley looks at the historical precedence for US expansionism and just why Trump might be so keen on taking over Greenland. Suella Braverman trotted off to the USA to display her MAGA credentials at Trump's inauguration. She hung around to go "full Trump" in her speech to the Heritage Foundation . Is she signalling a potential jump to Reform, or is this an ongoing part of a campaign to oust Kemi Badenoch as Tory leader by shifting even further to the right? All of this within the context of Reform's rise in the polls. Plus Last in Iceland series that explains why Icelanders pay £60 pcm for heat, hot water & electricity
Rachel Reeves' big speech on growth. We ask where was Scotland in the raft of major projects? Hard on the heels of this came the shock, not to anyone who'd been paying attention, news that the CEO of GB Energy, Juergen Maier, could not only give no date for the £300 reduction in consumer bills promised by Labour at the General Election but also that the one thousand Scottish jobs would take around 20 years to materialise. Sticking with Labour is there another U-turn on policy in the pipeline despite the Court of Session ruling by Lord Ericht putting a stop on oil and gas production in the Rosebank and Jackdaw fields? Will Starmer side with Rachel Reeves, the GMB and Scottish Labour, and give the go ahead to drill? Or will Ed Milliband stand up to those voices and refuse to issue new licences? We, in the light of listener Simon Brooke's excellent contribution, re-examine the validity of the claims made by the industry on so called sustainable aviation fuel? Donald Trump has called time out on his plans to impose tariffs on Canada and Mexico. What's the reality behind the bluster? What's in store for the UK and the EU? Lesley looks at the historical precedence for US expansionism and just why Trump might be so keen on taking over Greenland. Suella Braverman trotted off to the USA to display her MAGA credentials at Trump's inauguration. She hung around to go "full Trump" in her speech to the Heritage Foundation . Is she signalling a potential jump to Reform, or is this an ongoing part of a campaign to oust Kemi Badenoch as Tory leader by shifting even further to the right? All of this within the context of Reform's rise in the polls. Plus Last in Iceland series that explains why Icelanders pay £60 pcm for heat, hot water & electricity
Scottish politics dissected from a left, pro-independence stance. Each week, award-winning broadcaster and journalist, Lesley Riddoch chews over the week’s news with former media lecturer and Dundee United fan, Pat Joyce. If you like intelligent, quirky chat about Scottish society and culture, and Scottish, UK and international politics analysed from a Scottish perspective; this podcast is for you.
Lesley Riddoch:
If you're a Scottish Labour MP, there's quite a lot of bending yourself out of shape going on, and it's gonna get worse. You'll already have had to vote against or just be doing something else when the WASPI debate happened last week. You'll already have to have accepted the two chart cap, the scrapping of winter fuel payments, and you're going to have to now accept that airport expansion in London, Heathrow, Luton, Gatwick, is actually part of a green strategy, and you're gonna have to accept that drilling in Rosebank, which was found to be a process that was unlawful in the Supreme Court, that that is an existing application which can probably go through and will make no impact on the environment at all. And you'll have to accept that Rachel Reeves put through a big speech last week that mentioned Bedford more than Scotland. You'll have to accept all of that.
Lesley Riddoch:
That comes probably with the territory. But what about Scottish voters? We look as well in the podcast at the fact that, Labour are doing pretty badly in the opinion polls, but it's that rather than an SNP surge that's predicted for the next elections here in Scotland. So a bit of a plague on all their houses, but what is going on? And can nobody seize the moment when there is such seismic change afoot because of Donald Trump?
Lesley Riddoch:
Those are the headlines. Now for the podcast.
Patrick Joyce:
Hi John's and welcome to this week's The Lesley Riddick podcast. You know it's a funny kind of thing you know that I often it often gets commented upon how often I mention football. And I've gotta start off with football here.
Lesley Riddoch:
To see you, bro.
Patrick Joyce:
Yeah. I'm gonna start off with Manchester United.
Lesley Riddoch:
Oh, yeah.
Patrick Joyce:
And, yeah, the chief executive the owner of Manchester United is one, Jim Radcliffe, chief executive officer, owner of INEOS, and in Rachel V's recent speech, nothing for Scotland as far as I could identify within all that framework, lots of stuff going on the Southeast Of England, and a few carrots thrown the way of of the North Of England, 1 of which was let's give a billionaire money to redevelop Manchester United's ground, Old Trafford. I mean is it just me or are they actually, I'm going to use this, take in the piss Lesley.
Lesley Riddoch:
Well completely, and I mean I seem to have had a tiny sort of Twitter spat at with Malcolm Chisholm from from Labour. With him you know I think I'm pretty much in agreement on most things except obviously independence because he was saying, yeah there was plenty of stuff about Scotland and I said, honest to God Malcolm, what? You know? But yes, I mean it feels, it feels like a hundred years ago now but that Rachel Reeves speech was really quite something. And I mean if I'd had a little counter going for how often Oxford, Cambridge, Heathrow and even Bedford got mentioned more than Scotland, you know?
Lesley Riddoch:
So the whole focus of growth, investment, everything over the next five years is this Dreaming Spires kind of growth corridor with some stuff lobbed out to Manchester. Yep, and you know that that proposal Leeds and Teesside. And just nothing about Scotland at all. And actually that same day, because I was listening to everything, listening to, Prime Minister's questions, a Labour MP, Gordon McKee, I mean, you know who he, anyway, had popped up to say would the Prime Minister back an AI growth zone in Glasgow? And one of those ones that, you know, if you're one of the very few squad that actually watch PMQs, you'll see that, you know, most MPs will sort of jump up and say this is a thing in my constituency, it's incredibly important, what do you think?
Lesley Riddoch:
And then, you know, the prime minister will go, Well, we applaud the kind of backing that you've given. Blah, blah. So anyway, Gordon McKee asks about that just after Rachel Rees has given Scotland a total defeat, right? And he gets no answer at all. He, you know, Stormer just mumbles that Scotland has real potential for AI growth zones, which is, which is so like the real potential for jobs in GB Energy, Yeah.
Lesley Riddoch:
Which is kind of like real potential. You know, we're past potential, man. You know, I mean, what is happening now in all of this? And then, you know, of course, on the other side of all of this, I mean, I wrote a column about this, which is really trying to say if, if she claims that clean energy is the biggest growth area in Britain, how can you not have a single mention of renewables rich Scotland? I mean, how is that possible?
Lesley Riddoch:
And the, the backhanded remarks that there were, honestly, I just about blew a gasket, the suggestion that this climate busting third runway at Heathrow would boost Scottish salmon and whisky exports. Right, right. I mean, I guess if there was an expansion of something, you know, in Oslo Airport, the people of Stockholm should be out there rejoicing because there's another way they can do their own country a disservice by chucking all that exports out to somewhere else. But we're supposed to be happy clappy people or whatever, you know. So I mean, and then of course there's just the, yeah, I think we're about to see yet another about turn, on Rosebank.
Lesley Riddoch:
But the, I mean, jaw dropping about turn there's been with that Heathrow, Gatwick, Luton expansions on the sort of green agenda that Labour had ten minutes ago is just, you know, unbelievable. And it struck me that, that, you know, there's all these messages coming out now, you know, from, from Labour. They're basically saying, Air travel is okay. The climate crisis doesn't matter. Donald Trump's calling shots, so let's talk his language.
Lesley Riddoch:
You know, it's, it's basically put the electric vehicle on hold and book Miami for the summer holidays. And I hear, I imagine quite a lot of people will be doing just that. But this is now with the endorsement of a government that was until ten minutes ago saying quite the opposite. And if you, just for good measure, bats and newts can go swivel, basically.
Patrick Joyce:
Oh, yeah.
Lesley Riddoch:
Planners are blockers. You know, so now we've not just got that horrible bed blocking kind of word. Anybody who's in a council level and is planning anything about their local and local democracy is just an irritating irrelevance that gets in the way of growth. I mean, she was.
Patrick Joyce:
I mean, what what it is with the the bats and newts and blockers, it's playing the populism card, Lesley, isn't it? I mean it's it's you can you can see this whole thing coming together in terms of, I mean we'll talk about it the latest polls, if I can say it now, that reform according to YouGov's latest polls are at 25%, Labour twenty four %, Tories twenty one %, Lib Dems fourteen %, Greens nine %, S and P three %, and again we've got to take that into consideration of the weightings that go in place there, but I mean that reaction you can see it within that framework of having to use these populist slogans and it's like talking in the pub, I mean you know that kind of lowest common denominator reference and to protecting the environment about looking after bats and newts, and it is playing that populism card, but that the labor are going to be, or obviously going to be going down. But I thought it was interesting you were talking about Rachel Reeves there, and you noted that the backdrop to her giving this underwhelming speech was a Siemens, was to promoting Siemens, and of course the new head of GB Energy, Jurgen Meyer is the ex CEO of Siemens and he let the cat out the barn somewhat didn't he this week with the, again talking about underwhelming news about what GB Energy wasn't going to do.
Lesley Riddoch:
Yeah, I mean it's going to be twenty years before it might get to a thousand jobs and the first stage of jobs might be kind of a hundred or a little bit more, and it's not going to be a new HQ, it's actually going to be sharing it with some bit of, you know, the British state. And he's going to stay in Manchester because after all, you know, now that Manu's getting a nice bit of tax funding kind of, you know, why would you leave basically? So it's just, I mean, come on, Scotts, you just can read the room, you know, this is, they don't give a toss and they think that we're sort of not watching, not alert to all of this. But the thing about, the other thing it struck me though, and I'm just vexing my mind now to think about which company it was that basically has given Rachel Reeves, you know, almost the day after this speech, who was it that basically said oh you're not giving us enough sweeteners at a foreign company and so we're not coming anymore, there's £400,000,000 of investment that ain't going to happen. Should have looked it up beforehand.
Lesley Riddoch:
But see, like there's the thing, it's like The UK is doing the branch economy stuff that the Scots are so familiar with. You know, I mean these guys just, if there's not enough I mean, the place is littered with stuff that was built to try and attract some foreign investment, that, you know, that just wilts at the sign of the least economic problems and thanks to blinking Donald Trump, there's probably quite a lot of wilting going on. But the list, the point was, the list that she she had of growth busting company names, if you listen to them, the majority of them were foreign companies. And this is not to be sort of, you know, anti foreign whatever. It's just that's is that what we've got to now?
Lesley Riddoch:
That, you know, the growth that's going to happen in this country is very often, foreign companies, sometimes in the case of things like Equinor, a Norwegian state owned company that comes in and basically takes a license for a UK asset that should be in the public sector, you know, that we should be running because we've never undone the sort of state of what Thatcher did to, you know, so much of, so much of Britain. So you're sort of sitting this example, I don't know, this is not going to go anywhere near trying to fix things. And the other thing that strikes me is what does actually create growth? If you look at, for example, I was, you know, suggesting Denmark, right, its biggest firm is Novo Nordisk and people will not have heard of that but they will have heard of Ozempic and other kind of weight loss, diabetes sort of drugs. And that's controversial, but the firm was set up in 1923 in Denmark by Danish researchers who just grew it slowly there.
Lesley Riddoch:
And I was going to say despite, but maybe because of a comprehensive welfare state funded by around 50% personal tax rates. And the same is true of Lego, the same is true of Maersk. These are really, really big international companies that haven't gone, oh God, you know, there's a high personal tax rate, but because they get what, what Denmark's about and they're paying into it. And that's homegrown growth, if you like, you know. And the other thing that struck me was what's necessary for people to do better in all sorts of regards.
Lesley Riddoch:
When you look at the health thing and, the point will be made because again a scary thing in Rachel Reeve's speech was the intention to start getting in and about welfare payments again in a very kind of Thatcherite sounding way. But the number of people who are waiting for surgeries or waiting for something that will help them get back to their ordinary lives is pretty large. Well the same would be true of so many bits of, of, kind of, Britain and Scotland, and it's, you know, a fault of both governments, where people are, local areas are not throwing six to start and then they're supposed to suddenly jump up and have a huge growth rate. They've chucked £20,000,000 which is maybe the only bit of Scottish investment and it wasn't a Reeves announcement, it predated it by a day £20,000,000 into the space company at Saxaford on Anst in Shetland. Now that happens to be where I was up close, kind of last year.
Lesley Riddoch:
And these guys currently, to get to Saxaford, you have to go across using two ferries from Shetland. So the first one takes you to Yell, then from Yell to Unst. Both those ferries are thirty years old plus. They're both being run by agency staff because local people make more money out of fish farms and so on. Those people come and face tooth, don't know the kind of quirks of the Old Lady ferries that they're running, so the number of breakdowns is legion.
Lesley Riddoch:
And you look then about, how, okay, how are we going to get growth and productivity running at Saxaford? It would be just actually putting the basics of reliable transport in. And that sounds boring compared to all the growth, growth, growth, you know, Siemens, Siemens and all those kind of big companies throwing it around. But the problem for Saxaford will be that its own population is actually depopulating at the moment because people are just sick and tired of not being able to make any appointments on the Mainland Of Shetland and they want tunnels. So I just think around the place, there's so much of this that we're not throwing six to start, and we're not giving people what they need to be able to sort of make a fist of the ideas that they have around them.
Lesley Riddoch:
And all of that ends up being growth, at a sort of micro level all around the place without you orchestrating it. People just using their heads particularly on energy to fund, to fuel lots of ideas, which is happening, you know, places like GED, but that could happen everywhere if we just got those basics right.
Patrick Joyce:
Yeah, but the thing about it is it's the top down inward investment that Reeve seems to be going for and damn everything else because I note that again what has happened in the last few days is was Lord Erict in the court of session in Edinburgh said that Rosebank and Jackdaw oil and gas fields should be put on hold going into production, your development can still take place there. It should be put on hold because I hadn't been detailed enough analysis on of the overall impact, not just of the extraction of the oil and gas, but the actual impact it would have on the climate of the use of the oil and gas. Now we kind of suspected that from the groundbreaking Horseshill Judgment in, I think it was Surrey wasn't it, about a year eighteen months ago when uplifting and Greenpeace took this on board. And, what's going on there? I mean, and that seems to be highlighting a fact the split that appears to be taken within the Labour party and also interestingly between Scottish Labour and the GMB up here, so Scottish Labour and GMB seems to be all in favour of developing Rosebank and Jackdaw, but there seems to be a split between the Reeves camp, Gopher Growth and Dandies, Newts and Bats, and let's open up Rosebank and Jackdaw.
Patrick Joyce:
Because using jesoeutical kind of analysis, we said in our manifesto that we were going to continue to give the go ahead to oils and gas fields that already had licenses, we weren't going to issue new ones. And that seems to be the wedge that she seems to be suggesting that would permit with a re analysis for the license to be continued to extract. But Miliband, it appears, is very anti this and they're going to be putting out a statement in the late spring from the energy sector from his department, which would probably put the kibosh on it, and there seems to be a split again within Scottish Labour MPs, most of whom it would appear on the surface, we'll see what happens in reality if Keir Starmer changes his mind on this, appear to be opposed to the development of Rosebank Jackdaw.
Lesley Riddoch:
Well actually just before we came on air Miliband was asked in the Commons about specifically about whether his government views Rosebank as an existing application or a new one, just as you say, and did a tremendously sort of, whoopsie doozy sort of way of not answering and said this is an individual planning case, I'm going to be careful what I say. The last government made an unlawful decision. According to the court, we are going to follow due process. The end. So nothing there.
Lesley Riddoch:
But I think, as you say, there should be a blooming meltdown within Labour about whether they're going to horse on with all of this, because, you know, it drives a coach and horses through pretty much, well, the law, you know, just everything actually, the, you know, their promises about the green transition. But just now it's, they're looking so mini Trump like in that sort of, here's what we just need to have, devil take behind most, you know, the bats and whatever can swivel, any little people that object just get out of the way, And, and we're just going hell for leather for drill, baby drill. I mean that's what this looks like. And it's hard to see how anybody could, you know, could argue with that if they do go ahead. And yes, they will have to make a decision at some point.
Lesley Riddoch:
I mean, the other thing that was actually talked about was something which, which Simon Brooke, a regular listener, had corrected us about. Actually, you've got the details of it. But it was basically the notion that, that kind of sustainable aviation fuels could address the problem of expansion at Heathrow, Gatwick, Luton and so on. Carla Denyer, who's the Green Party co leader, she has just been on her feet in the Commons saying it's completely unrealistic because it would require the use of half The UK's agricultural land to produce that fuel. I mean Simon put it a lot more forcefully.
Patrick Joyce:
Yes, I mean what Simon did and I mean me being me, I thought well this looks appalling what he's actually just said, I went and did the fact checks based on data from IATA and other industry bodies, and always remember within this framework this is dealing with when we talk about sustainable aviation fuel, this is based on consumption and yet despite the climate crisis the aviation industry as identified by the development of a third runway at Heathrow is keen to boost air travel, but I mean what it is is that one litre of aviation fuel is 8,250 calories. Now you need 800,000 calories per year per person and what is identified is that based on that, if you're using what they call the first generation of biofuels which is based on food, it's based on soybeans, it's based on all sorts of things like that, so it's food and corn etc. So based on that, and the analysis has been done is that it would take approximately 35,000,000,000 people worth of fuel, determining we have to to replace what we are doing in terms of kerosene, it would take the fuel for 35 to 30 7 billion worth of people, so that's over four times the amount of people living on the planet.
Patrick Joyce:
In order to sustain what we currently use in terms of kerosene for the current use of airplanes and jet fuel. So let's get this through folks, there are over 8,200,000,000 people on the planet in order to create sustainable aviation fuel using that first generation style which is based on foodstuffs that would require the foodstuffs that would support 35,000,000,000 to 37,000,000,000 people currently, it is utter nonsense. What we've also got is the waste fuels which is the second generation which is again I think what they're talking about when they talk about grangemouth and currently in 2021 zero point zero one percent of fuel used in the aviation industry comes from so called sustainable fuels. IATA in 2019 said we're all going to have 10% for 2017, and 2011 they said 6% by 2020, the EU five percent by 02/1930, well we're in 2021 which is the latest figures it stands at 0.01%. And you've got to take a look at this in terms of a couple of things here.
Patrick Joyce:
Is it morally responsible to actually turn over vast areas of agricultural land for monoculture? And with the the societal environmental impacts you can have from from doing that, even if you could do it, Should we do it? And secondly, with the use of waste fuels, in order to secure people traveling umpteen times by by jet, should we actually be taking what can be used in waste fuels that could be used, say, example in road transport? You know, use it in road transport in order to actually get people to use biofuels if it was possible, rather than jetting around the world. I mean that doesn't even get into the whole analysis being done about the growth in private jets.
Patrick Joyce:
Plus the fact even if you replace the co2, here we go, the contrails of jet flight actually have more impact on the climate than the co2 emitted by kerosene. And what you're getting into here is the fact is, is it greenwashing by the airline industry in order to go for growth in terms of of air travel, once it's utterly unsustainable by putting up this whole chimera of sustainable aviation fuel, which we've seen with the first generation from foodstuffs, you can't do it. And the second thing with the waste, even if we could do it, should it be used for, for a lot of people luxury travel as opposed to day to day travel with other forms of transport?
Lesley Riddoch:
Mhmm. Yeah. Yeah. And also just, you know, we get back to we get back to Rachel Reeves stuff, I mean she did announce some improvements and you know obviously England particularly has been a bit screwed by HS2 falling through, so the North Of England still has got big cities that aren't connected west to east. So okay, fair enough.
Lesley Riddoch:
But, you know, this just shows you where we've just accepted stuff, because if Scots were going to travel to Europe, the ideal thing would be to have the level of high speed rail that connects us via England, you know, to make that a going proposition that's roughly affordable. And, I mean, in a way, you end up not even stating this because it's stating the bleeding obvious that we just don't have that. It was never going to come with HS2. We weren't going to be connected to it. And so, you know, we're sitting here marooned in a way, with train systems that just aren't given priority, haven't been finished, and, you know, if the North Of England doesn't get attention, Scotland's not even anywhere in that, you know.
Lesley Riddoch:
So yes it's all it's all pretty grim.
Patrick Joyce:
And just listen, by the by, I mean what stand by and wait for this, you're going to get people talking about massive government subsidies required because the private sector won't be able to afford it because the International Civil Aviation, that was easy for me to say, the International Civil Aviation Organization reckoned you need to build around about three thirty massive biofuel refineries every year between now and 02/1930 in order to be able to cope with the demand purely from aviation fuel. So where's that money going to come from? Should we be cross subsidising? Should we make the polluter pay? Or should ordinary people who never go near planes but who do use cars and buses, should they be subsidizing it?
Patrick Joyce:
And does a standby for that one where the greenwashing comes in and augies your money piled? So as usual capitalism for poor, socialism for the rich.
Lesley Riddoch:
Yep, you've got that one banged over
Patrick Joyce:
there now. Yeah, but one of the key things about it as well is that one of the groups within the Labour party says, what The UK ought to be going for is green growth, given the fact of what Donald Trump's done in The States, which is to turn us back on green growth at the federal level, and we've also said, you've indicated quite clearly, this is not happening at state level, but at a federal level it's drill baby drill, turn your back on green growth. And Donald has been certainly causing a stir with tariff wars which have taken a very interesting turn have they not in the past I think twenty four hours?
Lesley Riddoch:
Well you've got to keep checking every ten and that's actually what's going on with all of that, and it does look like you know he is disrupting and so he's dangling the 25% threat of 25% tariffs against Canada and Mexico. I mean, I was listening to something which was pointing out, and this so echoes Brexit, that actually the, you know, that in that there never was any suggestion of tariffs in the continent of Greater America. Lots of businesses are importing parts, you know, they're getting exported again, you know, because the border hasn't meant very much, there's a huge integration of things working across all those three countries, which would suddenly be nightmarish to try to kind of, you know, or in fact not nightmarish, Brexit ish actually, to be able to to to try and get in and deal with. There's also lots of just boringly, but it's the sort of thing people will notice, there's lots of fruit and vegetables and stuff coming from Mexico. You'll notice that the prices go up, if you're an American, pretty quickly if all of that went ahead.
Lesley Riddoch:
So, you know, so he's dangled this threat. The market seemed to have responded by just diving basically, which I think is something he's noticed. So suddenly he's claiming a victory because he's managed to whack these guys out of the head. The Mexicans have said that they'll, you know, put more people at the border to try and stop crossings. The Canadians have said that they'll try to make sure that that, imported fentanyl, I think I've said that wrongly, fentanyl, Fentanyl.
Lesley Riddoch:
Which is a, you know, a kind of prescription drug that's become an epidemic in The States, which he claims is coming in from China via Canada. They'll do something to kind of, you know, crack down on that going across the border. So it looks like everyone's basically puckered up, you know, like little obedient lap dogs. Yeah, we'll do that. We'll do that.
Lesley Riddoch:
Just don't, you know, don't, don't, don't. And, okay, so he can claim some, some victory there. But where we're heading, I mean, you know, dear nose, and most people, I guess, will not be, you know, international trade will not be their, their sort of mastermind special subject, let's say. And yet, if you're looking at China, there's the big one. And, there's something interesting in that because quite apart from everyone will know that he's threatening I can't remember if it's 10% or 15% on different things and the Chinese have come back and said right, well we'll take Google to court and, you know, we're going to look at a whole lot of stuff you're doing that we think is a restriction of trade.
Lesley Riddoch:
But just a small print down there, they've basically, they've banned the export of rare earth minerals which you'll hear a lot more about these actually because these many of them, I can't actually haven't got in front of me all the name, you'd look at them and you'd think, you know, I don't recognize a single one of them, but they are the kind of components that go into all the tech that we are now seeing, you know, from our phones to everything else. The Chinese are the world's biggest processors of rare earth minerals. And at number eight on the pop chart there comes Greenland. So that that is when I did a little kind of explainer video thing, which, you know, is looking at the various reasons for what Trump is on to. But if you start looking then at more small print, today, yesterday Donald Trump was basically saying that a quid pro quo for continuing support to Ukraine is valuable rare earths.
Lesley Riddoch:
So he says we're going to do a deal with Ukraine where they're going to secure what we're giving them with their rare earths. So, you know, when you come back to what, you know, what's the Trump, Musk, all that kind of, you know, tech bro stuff is trying to push forward with big AI, with big, you know, undercut by another Chinese firm, I think just last week, basically. But, you know, if that's the future of where he sees it being, then actually he, if you look at where he's trying to get rare earths from where he can, you know, where they can come, he's had to write China off because they've already decided they're keeping that because that's how they, you know, that's the fundament of their own industry And that's part of the reason that he's got this kind of, I mean, lecherous eye, basically, on Greenland, which has, which has encouraged, the EU leaders to come out, backing Denmark and Greenland by saying basically, bugger off in polite language, you know. But that's an incredible scenario to think that Trump would seriously think of sort of invading
Patrick Joyce:
a NATO partner, which is what Greenland belonging to Denmark actually is. Yeah, I mean, it just, it's, it, I'd almost forgotten quite unhinged Trump was in the, in this first, first time around as president. And I mean it just came, comes, all comes roaring back at us with every overblown, overhyped, hyperbolic statement that is made and you're thinking what the hell is going on? And he seems to be surrounded by people who actually who actually amplify all this. I mean I always remember, and you know I'm not saying he's a Nazi, but I do remember, reading when I was doing some studies, reading about the discussion was within the Nazi party administration, was that it wasn't structured and organized at all as a government and everyone thought about working towards the fuhrer.
Patrick Joyce:
What you did is you presented arguments, you did everything in order to secure the approval for whatever came in front of them by working towards the Fourier's perspectives. And so I think what's going on there is working towards Trump's perspective, it's completely altered the Republican party. And I mean, and one of the key aspects of it is, and that's the the point that is never really made and the democrats failed on, is the reason why there are significant trade deficits for countries like Canada, Mexico, European Union because of the continued outsourcing of what were traditional American jobs for cheap labour in other countries, you know that's what, and if you've got that he said that the EU is absolutely scandalous, I mean he said it was $300,000,000,000 it was deficit, it's about 130 odd billion dollars, we'll get onto exaggerating figures again in the moment, but he said that that's going on and they won't take our cars, they are crap, and they won't take our food. Well your food's all crap, you know and there are logical reasons behind this, you know and what's also happened with Mexico is that the EU has gone to Mexico, EU car manufacturers based themselves in Mexico in order to secure that.
Patrick Joyce:
But one of the key things behind it Lesley, because I was listening to the, believe in it, the new Caroline Levitt White House spokesperson,
Lesley Riddoch:
and
Patrick Joyce:
I thought have I actually heard this correctly? She claimed that fentanyl has killed tens of millions of Americans And I noted in the BBC's reporting of this on their website, millions of North Americans have been killed by fentanyl. And I thought that sounds an annoyance, tens of millions of Americans. So I went and looked it up, in total, and this is an appalling figure, for deaths from overdoses from all drugs, and were in 2023 were one hundred and thirteen thousand, not tens of millions, and that's from all sources. And the paradox about it is as well, is he goes on about Canada and fentanyl.
Patrick Joyce:
They've identified, and this is, yes, the drugs administration has said one percent of the fentanyl that comes into The United States Of America comes from Canada. You know. So it's this oddity here is it, and Canada had already instituted significant measures in December to try and block off that route. Similarly with Mexico, they've actually instituted with the new president, Scheinbun, they've instituted measurements already to block off the route, and what they've done is they've put in place more border guards for illegal immigration. So it appears that what Trump's doing to me is hyping up these situations to make them overblown, and then by threatening something appears to have won victories but he hasn't won any victories at all.
Patrick Joyce:
So it's a really odd one is the way I'm reading it, I just say with the fentero one it doesn't actually bear any analysis whatsoever. So Trump appears to be odd engineering victories, which in reality when you go behind what happened with Canada and Mexico, ain't victories at all.
Lesley Riddoch:
And just behind all of this, and this was something I got into in the Greenland, thing, the thing that I hadn't realized is actually how much in the past the Americans have solved what they regard as problems or actually gained territory, some of the states, by literally buying them. So, I mean, it sounds crazy, a bit crazy here, although, hey, let's look at the British Empire. We didn't do anything as lofty as buying stuff. We just, you know, took it. So, but, but, I mean, Louisiana, for example, bought from the French in 1803.
Lesley Riddoch:
Florida, you know, Mar a Lago, bit of a clue in the name there, bought from Spain in 1821. And, and they tried to buy Canada in the 1850s, ended up buying Alaska instead, from the Russians, who were just very keen that land shouldn't go to the Brits, who at that point were the huge expansionist, you know, superpower of the time, 1867. So, I mean, all of this kind of, you know, it looks to us just completely wild beside that you're going to go and buy something just because you're worried about whether the Chinese are going to get it and then they've got even more rare earth minerals or, you know, whatever. And the other thing just to have a look at is, I mean, jaw dropping stuff about what the Americans have done in Greenland. They ended up, they had a US base there.
Lesley Riddoch:
I mean, allowed in actually by the Danes who in the war, you know, they were, they were occupied by the Nazis. So, their guys said, Yeah, you could basically act like a protectorate to the Americans. I mean, protect Greenland because we can't. And so they never left. They, they put an early warning sort of system up and then they just started to, expand what they were doing in just unbelievable ways.
Lesley Riddoch:
I mean, they, they built up one project, Camp Century, which was a military base under the ice for 200 people. But then they were developing Project Iceworm, which was, and I've had to check this about seven times, 52,000 miles of tunnels under the ice to store 600 nuclear medium range ballistic missiles. Jeez. And the only reason they didn't go ahead with it is because the ice below me was unstable. Everybody's skating over this, but that was partly because the Greenland is closer to everybody the Americans feel threatened by, vis Russia, over the top as it were.
Lesley Riddoch:
But that's some blimmin' track record. So it's no wonder that currently, you know, the Greenlanders are, there's a poll done amongst them. It said that a larger share of the population see North Korea and Iran, no, hang on a minute, they see Trump and The States as a larger threat than North Korea and Iran. And, you know, Greenlanders, seventy eight percent, want to be Greenlandic. Independent, otherwise, but just not kind of getting swept into the, you know, sweaty palm of Donald Trump.
Lesley Riddoch:
But anyway, it's like every time he does something, it shines a light on strange crevices of history and behaviour, which, you know, which we haven't really sort of looked at, before. So we're all aware of it now. And I just wonder how much, you know, how much road he's got left. Clearly the EU are popping it, you know, as to how much tariff wise is going to be sent to them. And then Keir Starmer is doing a kind of amusing, if you're, yeah, you know, if you're just sort of watching it from the sidelines, little dance between sort of trying to curry up a wee bit to the EU, given that, you know, that's our day to day markets and so on, but realizing that Donald Trump ficcing hates the EU, sort of couriering back again just to try and stay in some nebulous holding position in the middle somewhere so that, you know, Britain doesn't get whacked.
Lesley Riddoch:
God Almighty, you know, what have we come to? And just by the by, I don't know if you noticed, there's a wee stuchette sort of developing about Keir Starmer during lockdown, have you noticed this?
Patrick Joyce:
Oh yes, with the The Voice coach, which reminds me of the Resistible Rise of Arturo We by Bertolt Brecht, if you remember that scene where Arturoy brings in the voice coach to practice in order to become a Grise Orator.
Lesley Riddoch:
Yeah, well actually there's a little snatch in one of the papers of what what Keir Starmer sounded like before he was Colour Me Beautiful, you know, and actually he was he was always pretty dull, but you know he sounded a lot more normal, so kind of well done girl, but anyway she got smuggled in in 2020 as a key worker to keep the voice coach stuff going. So, I mean, whether or not, you know, the Tories will try to kind of push this around but it still sits with that sort of thing that Labour really miscalculators, that they think it's okay for him to have glasses and, you know, freebies and holidays and stuff and somehow because they're such innately good earnest people it doesn't register with the public the same way as it would if it was the Tory grasping what's it that we're doing it? So I mean who knows if that that will pop up or not?
Patrick Joyce:
Yeah but I mean it does fuel the populism doesn't it? I mean I'm using that term in its broad ascent to mean the right wing populism which is signified by the growth in the reform, and the poll actually showed that I think it was a quarter of people who voted Conservative the last general election had now switched in this YouGov poll to consider voting reform, but there must be I think a significant number of people who voted Labour, and because of the fact that the lack of the Labour narrative, and again pointing to what happened to the Democrats, the United States of America, the centrist liberal, neo capitalist route that the Labour party seems to have thrust on to. The rhetoric of change and the change now being made is, look at folks, it's folk on welfare, it's WASPI women, it's all these folk who have gone, it's the retaining of the two child benefit cap and the thrusting because of that lack of an alternative left wing reform agenda, throwing people towards if we're looking for a solution in England, you know it's reform and it's there. And I know that the one of the more interesting responses, and again it kind of links back to Trump, and the interesting response has been within the conservative party, when you actually had Suella Braverman, and I've got to remind yourself she's still an MP and she was the home secretary trotting off and it just so happened to be walking behind her as that piece of human orger, Lawrence Fox, arriving at the same time to sort of like dance attendance or Donald Trump but not actually get into the actual inauguration, but to be present at rallies.
Patrick Joyce:
And Braverman gave a speech to the Heritage Foundation, that right wing think tank who are behind project twenty twenty five, that many of the elements that they put within that are now coming to fruition within the Trump policy platform, but she took the time out at the Margaret Thatcher Memorial speech to turn around and talk about mass migration being an existential crisis, millions of people coming to The UK do not have its best interests at heart and refuse to assimilate or integrate, And she said, now remember because Sue Ellen Braverman's parents were migrants, she said too many migrants these days just want to take take take control migration of, and I love this word, yesteryear, you know that's a bit old, yesteryear were much more about giving, you know, like my parents. But the point that you made about the threat from Iran and North Korea, she referred to JD Vance suggesting that The UK could become the first Islamist nation with nuclear weapons and she said, is it an impossibility that twenty years from now it will be The UK, not China, or Russia that will emerge as the greatest strategic threat to The USA?
Lesley Riddoch:
Honestly, this is like, you know, when something like this is said, it's like the, you know, the pink elephant. Once it's said, it's an image. Or like cats being banned, you know, I mean, God almighty. You know John Travalli having to spend serious time sort of, you know, talking that one down. And then just to go back though to your reform thing, I mean something that I read, a survey had suggested that, 64 of the top 100 seats that reform might win are Labour and they include seats like Ed Miliband and Bridgette Phillipson.
Lesley Riddoch:
You know, there's quite, there's quite a lot of sort of big beasts in there and I was put to thinking about that because, I spoke to a guy recently here in Fife. He is a Fife local, he's setting up a new business and, you know, very cheery guy, whatever, and basically he he likes Donald Trump. I mean, he's a Trump supporter, which took me aback somewhat. And he voted yes in the independence referendum.
Patrick Joyce:
-Mm -So
Lesley Riddoch:
you're kind of thinking, Right. But, you know, in a long conversation with him, what became really apparent was he has, had it with the level of just, you know, bureaucratic objections to anything being done and the lack of basic stuff working in, in Scotland and Britain. And I think this is so, something disruptive is, is appealing. And strangely for him, Independents would have done it. That would have been disruptive enough to stick around and see what, you know, how the dust settled and whether we could have a better society basically.
Lesley Riddoch:
Or, you know, a Trump type disruption, yep, that'll do for him as well. The thing that we'll not do for him is just incremental nicey nicey, a little shuggle here, a shuggle there kind of stuff because he is ready to leave Scotland. And he might, you know, sure enough, I'm sure, all, many of us listening to this who are, you know, seen our 20 birthdays a couple of times, will think of times where we just thought, Okay, I've had enough of this and let's go somewhere else. And you don't, you don't do it. But actually, there's an awful lot of younger people are, are doing it, you know, especially when they're being consciously recruited by Australia and places like this.
Lesley Riddoch:
So it's kind of that, it's strange that, that two clumps should be there. Now whether the independence proposition that comes from John Swinney and the SNP is, you know, disrupted, sounds like it's going to change enough for him to stick around or to think that he'll actually, you know, he'll go this this away instead of onto the reform Trump axis. You know, fuck ends. And that, just to chuck stuff in while we're at it, you know, there's a lot of changes, although the opinion polls are still suggesting that Labour's going to basically implode at this rate at the next election. I mean, the guru himself, John Curtis, has said, you know, that what's really happening is Labour's difficulties just continue and actually, the SNP is slipping back on the current polls compared to previous ones.
Lesley Riddoch:
If you look just a little bit of what's happening with MSP standing again, there's quite a few you know, Shona Robison will be standing up possibly just after we finish this to deliver a budget that looks like it's got home and dry with Labour abstaining, the Lib Dems getting what they want, the Greens getting what they want, and, you know, show back on the road and it'll get through despite being a minority government, which is kind of an achievement, I've no doubt, you know, putting that all together. But she hasn't confirmed she's standing again. So it's not just, you know, there's still Nicola Sturgeon, you know, there's a whole list of others. Ivan McKee, who's currently the public finance minister, not sure if he'll stand. Michelle Thompson has already said she's, you know, going to, she's going to leave and one interesting point about that is that those two were some of the biggest supporters of Kate Forbes for the leadership.
Lesley Riddoch:
If you're going to chuck the whole lot of it in, Stephen Flynn looks like that slightly gobbbed kind of attempt to get a seat in Aberdeenshire, which, which, you know, just looked like it was basically poaching the seat of Audrey Nicola was just a bit cat candid. That seems to have put him back on the shelf, so he's got no plans to come to the Scottish Parliament this time round, which leaves me wondering what, you know, what's the plan? Yeah, exactly. Where's the kind of, if we're just gonna, and I would imagine that quite a few of well, there's a, there's a Hollywood party, if you like. That's where it's at.
Lesley Riddoch:
And they are the ones who decide the kind of people they want. They're vetting them, even as we speak, for candidates. So, you know, is somebody that's going to be because again, coming back to the guy I was speaking to, you know, what he was very much about, about leaders, you know, so that again, Trump was an eye catching leader and what he felt was independence needed an eye catching leader. Now, you know, chance would be a fine thing and so on. But still, if that's, you know, some of that is the name of the game, you do look at where we are now and think, well, who will be coming after John Swinney?
Lesley Riddoch:
You know, so it's I mean, I know everyone can sit back and kind of go, well look, this is better than a punch in the throat, which is where we thought we were going.
Patrick Joyce:
Yeah.
Lesley Riddoch:
But it's not, you know, the underlying conditions within within the SNP don't look entirely sunny. And, I, you know, I do wonder what will happen, when we would even know, since so little of this is ever, naturally enough, is ever made public, you know? And then, of course, we've still got Operation Branch IV rumbling on with, you know, whether that will where the polis are now quite clearly coming out saying we have given the stuff to the Crown Office, it ain't us, Gov. So you know people are expecting the Crown Office now to have to just finally put up a shut up, and that will have a big impact I guess on stuff as well.
Patrick Joyce:
Yeah because I mean the Curtis analysis I noted, because I'd written down here that under the predicted voting patterns it's because Labour are going to be crucified in the next election and the split between the rights between the Tories and Reformum, that the SNP could finish up with 43 seats at Westminster, to which my my genuine reply was, I'm so fecking what?
Lesley Riddoch:
You know? Unless, I mean I've heard someone who used to be very close in in the middle of all of this suggesting that there could be a plan to make the next Westminster election the de facto referendum.
Patrick Joyce:
Yep.
Lesley Riddoch:
So that's 2029. I mean, you begin to think, I don't know what age will I be then, sort of.
Patrick Joyce:
Well, I will be 77.
Lesley Riddoch:
It's a nice round number actually, Pat. Yeah. Anyway, so, you know, a lot of people will feel jings, you know, but nonetheless, if that, you know, if if that was a plan, it would be great if we could actually plan a plan a bit and talk about it, everybody talk about it, but you know that'll never happen. It'll just get pulled out of the bag, you know, six months before the kickoff and it won't work. So, but nonetheless that could be a plan and I quite appreciate there's a lot of people just, you know, yeah, will just be despairing at these kind of, you know, indirect ways to try and do something that ought to be direct.
Lesley Riddoch:
But, you know, here we are and you're going to get something disruptive, you've got to have a moment, you've got to have a campaign, you've got to have a leader, you've got to have everybody really working together. If ALBA do, you know, they're on 7% on the list, only 2% on the first post, first past the post bit in the Scottish elections. Yeah. Which does seem to suggest that, you know, a lot of people are saying to don't split the vote in constituencies please, but we would think about giving you a vote on the list because, you know, at the moment it looks like the SNP will clean up again on the first bit. If there is, you know, if there's whatever is supposed to be seven MSPs from ALBA, there's more Greens, there will have to be, the joint working that currently is proving to be absolutely impossible to do.
Lesley Riddoch:
So anyway, that's just a ponder about the future.
Patrick Joyce:
Well I notice again just going that Neil Findlay said at one point there were discussions about some form of joint working between the SNP and the previous incarnation of the Labour party in Scotland, I presume under Richard Leonard. And I mean to me that has always been at my gut level with the Labour party in Scotland as I used to know it, the natural allies, the natural allies are between the SNP and the Labour Party working together. But as I say, the constitutional issue continues to actually divert us from the realities of tackling poverty and when you have people whom in the Labour party standing up and for means testing and not getting rid of the two childbirth and you think to yourself, hang on a minute here Paul, what do you actually stand for anymore? And that's why people like Brian Leishman and Monica Lennon, I mean I wonder what the hell they're still doing within the Labour party because it bears absolutely no resemblance to the one I used to know and the vast majority of people who from my background knew in the Labour party here. But, yeah that's
Lesley Riddoch:
But yes, I mean I noted and got a sort of frisky response from Baroness Margaret Curran, which is a sentence I never fully expected to say. I noticed in some, I think it was Radio Scotland interview, she was introduced as Baroness Margaret Curran and sounded a bit, Nah, I think we can just lose the Baroness bit. But you can't lose it, see? Because once you're there, you're there. So I looked to see I thought, Well, when does she become a baroness?
Lesley Riddoch:
Then I must have missed that. So I looked I was on Twitter anyway. So I sort of looked for her there. Not a mention. And actually, it went right over the period when she was elevated, I think is the right word.
Lesley Riddoch:
So she didn't, you know, she, I think, obviously felt not good enough about it, to kind of want to fluff it up on Twitter. And I made the point that although I actually like Margaret, that's, it's a pretty bad look, you know? It really is. And so she did come back and sort of said, Oh, well, I must, you know, I'm not, I'm not always up to date on my Twitter account, you know, whatever, it's Neah Biggie. Yeah, but you were tweeting about other things, Margaret, you know?
Lesley Riddoch:
Yeah. So it's kind of, in the end, you're forced to become the kind of person that, that UK Labour expects you to be. And as you say, it expects you to jump when you're told, to not take cognizance of what the Scottish dimension of politics is, to, to faithfully jump, you know, toe the line on all sorts of stuff you probably came into politics to oppose just to show how blooming, hard nosed Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves are. You've got to do all of that. You've got to, you've probably had a picture of yourself supporting the WASPI campaign like all of the rest of them, which you've now had to go and try and delete out of your timelines of everything because hardly, there's 10 MPs supporting Stephen Flynn's bill that got passed, but a ten minute rule bill is going nowhere because it needs time, government time to be able to progress.
Lesley Riddoch:
But as you say, Brian Leishman, who's Alawang Grangemouth, only Labour MP from Scotland that basically supported Stephen Flynn. And are we saying that the kind of folk who are, you know, I know some of the people who are Labour MPs, this is not who they are. But you get bent all out of shape. And so Margaret will have been told, you've just got to jump to it, you know, we need to pack the laws because we're going to push. I mean, dear news, I don't know what their, what their strategy is but there's always some reason why this ludicrous thing cannot be just completely axed.
Lesley Riddoch:
And then you're, you've got to decide and just, it makes, it makes a branch office look, you know, look positively central and well connected to see how, how much people in Labour in Scotland are just having to chuck what they believe in completely over their shoulders to pucker up within the UK Labour Party. And that will make them lose. -I mean, this is the other thing that's mind blowing. -Yeah. -It's like, who will ever sort of just go, I mean, okay, I can see that you think all of us pretending that we're like English MPs and we're all, you know, great loyalists, that that will work.
Lesley Riddoch:
But hello, here's all these opinion polls that are basically saying the more that we just look like a lot of brown nosing, you know, whatsis that don't give a shit about people, in poverty and a kind of social democratic society in Scotland, which is what the common wheel of it is, the more that we're being shown to be at odds with that, the less likely we are to win at local election, whether it's Scottish or general election or anything. And on the little boat sails, you know, to some sort of oblivion, which
Patrick Joyce:
Yeah, because that's the whole thing I was thinking about. Every time one of these souks of the Labour MPs stand, Scottish Labour MPs stand up and say, then fundamentally they quoted don't you think Prime Minister the Scottish Government, the SNP Scottish Government is absolutely crap? Oh yes, yes, yes, yes. And I think to myself, yeah you're suking up to somebody that a) doesn't look as if West Reading will have his way, will continue to be leaders of the Labour party for very long, and secondly it looks like they're going to actually tank it at the next general election, so you'll be out and your government will be out and where did your suking up get you to?
Lesley Riddoch:
Yeah well that's always the trouble with suking up, but anyway yes.
Patrick Joyce:
Yeah but on a lighter note, we went to the pictures, yeah again, I just say to see Saturday night which is a really interesting idea about doing in real time about the hour and a half that led up to the first night I think in 1979 of Saturday Night Live, the American comedy show which has become an institution in The States. Really, really interesting film, really enjoyable, frenetic to the last, but the big thing about it was the film itself had comedic bits in it, but bizarrely any time somebody stood up and did one of the so called comedy routines that appeared on Saturday Night Live, that everybody in the movie was laughing outrageously at. I thought, is that supposed to be funny part? So it's an interesting film but the funny bits from the movie that are meant to be from the Saturday Night Live weren't funny at all, but yeah it's a cracking wee watch but don't expect big laughs out there the comedy routines, well unless my sense of humor is probably bizarre and rooted in all sorts of other areas that I don't dare go down the route to, so yeah it was all right.
Lesley Riddoch:
Well I've been reading a book, Brave New Music, which is about Martin Bennett, which was produced by, well, it was written by Gary West, really well done. Many of the photographs by BJ Stewart, who is a friend of Martin Bennett's. -Mm -And, you know, just amazing just to get really behind the scenes of of his life. So if anybody, you know, I mean, I think if you're interested in Martin Bennett, if you've been to a GRIT orchestra concert and you just want to know a bit behind whatever put that together and what created the incredible loyalty amongst Friends that they for ten years have put together an orchestra without much funding to try to keep his music alive and then ending up with sell out concerts all over Scotland. If that's in the least way interesting to you then buy the blooming book.
Lesley Riddoch:
Anyway, a link will appear. Yep, great,
Patrick Joyce:
well yes after the after fifty odd minutes of us ranting, raving, and wondering how despairingly bad the world has become, there's always the music of Martin Bennett to take refuge in. And on that hopefully cheery note, we'll see you next week, chumps.