Hello and welcome to Not Another One, the podcast with me, Steve Richards, Tim Montgomery, Ian Martin, Miranda Green.

Thank you very much for tuning in. This, by the way, is part one. We're doing two as ever.

Two meaty podcasts. None of this, you know, answering listeners questions as our entire second podcast.

Vegetarian editions are available.

Yeah, completely. Completely.

But, yeah, we will soon have a mechanism for listeners questions but you're going to get two

podcasts the next one will be looking at harris versus trump which is reaching wow an extraordinary

moment but the first one we're going to be shortly looking at the politics and economics of

this first budget of the Labour government.

But before all of that, Alex Salmon died suddenly last Saturday.

And Ian, you wrote a column on Thursday, which was excoriating, would you say? I mean, it was, you were

clearly not joining in, as I have tended to actually, for reasons I'll explain, the outpouring

of praise for Salmon. Yeah, I think we, we disagree agreeably on this, I think, don't we, Steve? Yeah, big admirer. I mean, I, I, I think we disagree agreeably on this, I think, don't we, Steve?

Yeah, big admirer.

I mean, I knew him pretty well, sort of as well as a journalist can from being, when I was a young political editor in the 90s and he was leader of the SNP.

And over a 10-year period, I probably spoke to him, you know, pretty much two or three times a week, lunched regularly, you know, where the wine flowed.

He loved gossip.

And so what I'm saying is I'm not blind to his strengths.

He was an incredibly intelligent debater.

Could be a lot of fun when he chose to be strengths. He was incredibly intelligent debater, could be a lot of fun when he chose to be charming,

or when he chose to be amusing, and then he could turn. And I was struck by this outpouring on sort of Sunday, Monday, Tuesday of praise for this, praise for this guy.

And I just thought it was completely out of balance.

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