We have a long reflection on the trauma that's around at the moment.

Some of it faced by people who have campaigned against things like the battery storage plants

that are abounding around rural Scotland.

Sleepless nights, disappointment, disillusionment, that may not seem like a big deal in the face of all the other trauma going around.

The terrorist attack on Jews in Australia,

the enduring, horrible genocide being experienced in Gaza, and the suggestion by President Netanyahu

that you can't speak about one without getting on the wrong side of the other. So we discuss all

of that. Donald Trump's allegation that

putting it bluntly, Europe is crap, and perhaps the difficulty in managing to get a common

position on giving funds to Ukraine would bear that out. We talk as well about the question

time furori over that question about fluency that turned second languages

amongst young people that turned into a question about fluency, which it clearly ain't,

and much else besides, those are the headlines now for the podcast.

Well, hi folks and welcome to this week's Leslie Ridder podcast.

Leslie, you're just back from Tainaut and understand you've been

off swimming in the first of Tay recently so not something I'd have energy to do, I have to say.

I'm completely wab it with this weird lurgy, which kind of doesn't feel like it's doing a lot

when it's doing it other than that you're completely stuffed up and you can probably hear that even more than normal in my voice but just totally knackard all the time I kind of dropped the kids off at school yesterday and then came home and like slept for four hours by accident woke up

went to a two hour long

nativity

school extravaganza with two different

choirs of people singing in French

...