Hello, hello, hello and welcome to the show. So we weren't here last week. We will now

restarting the live show. So we're going to do this every Wednesday at 5 p.m. Quacka Fuffle

had to run around Madrid where I am for personal reasons to find an ethernet cable to make this

look like we got there after a lot of panic. So we persevere. Now what we're talking about today,

we're going to talk about democracy. Democracy, you see, is a precious thing. Democracy was

fought for at great cost and great sacrifice by our ancestors. And when our political parties,

when our parties of government, and there are only two parties of government realistically

in this country, that is across the UK before I annoy, obviously, SMP supporters. But when our

parties of government show their contempt for democracy, that should concern and worry us all.

Now Jamie Driscoll is the labour mayor for North Pine, hugely respected, which I'll come on to,

with a record to be proud of, driving force for the green industrial revolution this country

desperately needs, both to save the planet and also for the future of jobs and the economy,

securing huge amounts of money for schools, council, small businesses, NGOs you name it,

to help tackle the climate emergency and the energy crisis, getting loans, equity and grants

to achieve net zero, create thousands of jobs with permanent contracts and good pay in a region,

which of course has suffered so much over the last few decades from deindustrialisation.

It's taken on child poverty, built affordable homes. These are things that a labour mayor should be proud of.

These are things that the labour party should be proud of. This is what a labour party,

whether it's whether its name should be doing with the political power granted to it by those who vote for it.

That's what a labour party was founded to do on behalf of those it was founded to represent and champion.

Now, there is now a contest for a new and large position of North East Mayor.

So you get a process within the labour party, which is supposed to be democratic.

...