Political Distractions
From Our Own Correspondent
BBC
4.4 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 16 March 2017
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Pets and Politics; football and narcotics; and building a country with a flag. Kate Adie introduces correspondents' stories. South Korea is in political turmoil but, as Steve Evans explains, people seem more concerned with the fate of the now ex-president's pets. The narcotic plant Qat and Premiership football provide a welcome distraction from boredom in the Horn of Africa, says James Jeffrey. And governments are quite happy with that. How do you unify a country? That was a challenge faced by Kyrgystan's flag designers, as Caroline Eden discovered. The village of Deià, on Mallorca's north shore, is where the poet and novelist Robert Graves lived and died. Graeme Fife used to be a frequent visitor. Now he wonders how much the place has changed. Belize is one of the countries that still has the death penalty on its statute books. But it hasn't executed anyone for decades. And now others, including a woman with the nickname of the anti-Christ, are having their life sentences reduced. Charlotte McDonald explains why.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | This is the BBC. |
| 0:03.0 | Yes, this is from our own correspondent, and the addition which was first broadcast on Radio 4 on Thursday the 16th of March 2017. |
| 0:18.1 | So with pets, politics, prisoners and interesting plants, here's Kate A. |
| 0:19.1 | Hello. Today boredom is a major problem in the Horn of Africa, says our correspondent, and it keeps |
| 0:26.3 | the demand for narcotic plants and premiership football at the top of the table. |
| 0:32.0 | How do you bring a new country together in Kyrgyzstan by smoking, sketching |
| 0:37.1 | and philosophising deep into the night? We're with a stranger who knows his way around with the ghosts of Myorca, and in Belize we hear |
| 0:46.3 | why the woman they call the Antichrist no longer has a life sentence. |
| 0:52.2 | The US Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, is on his first official visit to Asia. |
| 0:58.0 | What to do about North Korea and its missile tests will be a major talking point. His visit comes as South Korea is in |
| 1:05.8 | political crisis after the president there was sacked last week. The boss of the |
| 1:10.6 | country's biggest company is also in jail. |
| 1:14.0 | But the focus right now is apparently on more important matters, as Steve Evans explains. |
| 1:21.0 | You know that a previously poor country has reached the full apogee of Western prosperity and |
| 1:26.6 | civilization when its people start to treat animals with the reverence they normally |
| 1:31.8 | reserved for humans. |
| 1:34.0 | Only when pets are pampered like babies |
| 1:37.0 | can we say that a country has truly arrived. |
| 1:40.0 | I am pleased to announce that South Korea has reached that happy position. |
| 1:46.2 | This landmark in its development came this past week. |
| 1:49.9 | The President has been sacked, prosecutors are circling her over allegations of corruption, |
| 1:56.0 | involving tens of millions, perhaps hundreds of millions of pounds. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.