Reading the Signs
From Our Own Correspondent
BBC
4.4 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 5 November 2016
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Kate Adie introduces correspondents' stories. Today: Justin Rowlatt, in the smog of Delhi, hears how Theresa May's hopes of brokering a free-trade deal with India could be much harder than the government would admit to. Gabriel Gatehouse is shown a decades old piece in St Petersburg as the authorities tell people to prepare for the worst. Alexander Beetham, on the US-Mexico border, comes face-to-face with some of those Donald Trump says he will keep out of the US. Hugh Schofield wonders about the decline in the art of sign-painting in France and what it says about small-town life. And Christine Finn is in a forest of colours, with the leaf-peepers of Vermont.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Thank you for downloading from our own correspondent. This is the edition broadcast on Radio 4 on Saturday, November 5th, 2016. |
| 0:08.0 | And of course, it's introduced by Kate Aide. |
| 0:11.0 | Hello. Today we're in St. Petersburg, watching television and having a close encounter with truthiness. |
| 0:20.0 | Donald Trump wants to build a wall along the border with Mexico, but there's no evidence so far |
| 0:24.9 | that walls keep people out. The French used to like giant signs painted on walls and on house |
| 0:31.7 | ends too. Whatever happened to them. And in Vermont it's leaf peeping time to the |
| 0:37.8 | sound of car wheels screeching to a sudden halt. A week of greater Brexit Rumpus than ever with the High Court ruling on Parliament |
| 0:47.1 | having a say causing political upheaval and howling headlines. |
| 0:51.3 | Meanwhile the Prime Minister arrives in the Indian Capital |
| 0:55.1 | Delhi tomorrow, no doubt wanting to talk about opportunities for a free trade deal |
| 1:00.1 | rather than the rouse at home, but has Justin Rollat's been hearing more easier said than |
| 1:06.4 | done. |
| 1:08.2 | Mrs May arrives in Delhi at an auspicious time. |
| 1:12.3 | The weather is changing, a heavy smog has settled seeping through the streets |
| 1:16.6 | in the increasingly cool evenings. It brings glorious fiery sunsets and softens the city making the street lamps glow golden in the evenings. |
| 1:26.8 | But it also brings hacking coughs and asthma, one of the costs of India's enviable economic growth. |
| 1:33.0 | Devali, the Festival of Lights, |
| 1:35.0 | India's great seasonal celebration of optimism and hope, |
| 1:38.0 | has just passed, but its spirit lingers. |
| 1:41.0 | Devali is a time of extraordinary generosity with lavish gifts bestowed |
| 1:46.0 | upon friends and relatives, another sign of the growing wealth that makes a trade agreement |
| 1:50.7 | with India such an alluring prize. But another Devali tradition |
... |
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