Take 2

The Lesley Riddoch Podcast

Lesley Riddoch and Pat Joyce

Political Chat, News, Political Commentary, Scottish Politics, Politics, Scottish Independence, Uk Politics, Society & Culture

4.8 • 259 Ratings

🗓️ 15 April 2025

⏱️ 53 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Westminster was recalled last Saturday for and an emergency bill to save British Steel's Scunthorpe plant became law. It took around six and a half hours in total for Parliament to pass the legislation and the King to approve it. Sir Keir Starmer said "We are acting to protect the jobs of thousands of workers, and all options are on the table to secure the future of the industry".
We ask where was this urgency and commitment over Grangemouth, and Port Talbot steel works.
Lesley questions the casual way every commentator accepts that energy prices in Britain are 50% higher than Germany and double the price of the United States.
Ofgem has announced a change in the queuing regulations for wind and solar farms to eliminate so called "Zombie projects" and speed up the process of getting real projects up and running. Great news but have we been here before?

Find Out Now has released results from an opinion poll carried out for The National showing a rise in support for Scottish independence. We drill down into the poll and its potential significance.

Ash Regan of Alba has issued a call for a cross party pro independence convention before next year's Holyrood elections. We look at the response from the SNP and the Greens.
Meanwhile the Greens appear to be caught up in internecine conflict which doesn't seem to have been calmed down by its recent conference.
The 15th of April is the 36th anniversary of the Hillsborough disaster which saw 97 Liverpool football supporters losing their lives.
Starmer promised that the Hillsborough Law would be enacted by today. What was in that draft law? What has stalled its progress? What does the failure tell us about this Labour government and Starmer?
Pat is still recovering from the nerve shredding final round of The Masters golf in Augusta and his beloved Dundee United achieving a top 6 finish in their first season back in the top flight. This doesn't stop him from talking about them both though and wondering why sport can grip even the most rational of us so fiercely.
There's still a chance to catch Lesley's Denmark movie. To check out where it's showing click the link below
https://lesleyriddoch.com/events

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Grangemouth and Scunthorpe. It seems there's no connection between the two of them,
0:04.5	according to the Labour government. There's just nothing in common. Scunthorpe is the last
0:09.5	remaining steel plant capable of producing virgin steel in Britain, whereas there are other
0:14.9	oil refineries available apart from Grangemouth. But I suppose if you go around closing down all the hardware and
0:22.3	industrial base of the devolved countries before you tackle any of the English ones,
0:27.3	you'll always end up bailing an English plant out for nationalisation. So that's the caustic view
0:33.0	of that. We discuss Scunthorpe Grangemouth and look at its impact electorally since there's
0:40.3	English local elections in 16 days time and a question as to whether reform will look to be
0:46.4	sweeping up everywhere but Scunthorpe. We look also at the impact of the Liz Kendall pretty cruel disability cuts on opinion polls,
0:58.2	which now have a 56% lead for yes, and ask why the SMP seems to be backing away from
1:04.0	independence at the very point that the public seems to be moving towards it.
1:08.6	Those are the headlines. Now for the podcast. Hi, Johnson, welcome to this
1:17.9	week's Yeah, Leslie Ridder of podcast, Take Two, an unknown person. Let's come on Pat Joyce.
1:26.0	Thought he was starting the recording by clicking that little
1:29.7	button, didn't do his usual checks. No, no, no. So what happened was we went through the whole
1:35.8	Leslie Riddoch podcast for which we were parting ourselves on the back saying, well, that was a really
1:39.9	good one. And then I hit what I thought was the stop button. And guess what it was? It was the
1:46.0	effing record button. So we've got five seconds of self-congratulatory at the end of it. So yes.
1:53.7	So Pat, you're all human you. Yeah. What was the first time in how many podcasts? About 500 podcasts.
2:01.6	Yeah, you're allowed to do that.
2:03.1	So the only thing is we might be a little bit, I don't know, this might be better.
2:08.8	Who knows?
	...

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