Podcasts about Maastricht Treaty

Louise Edington discusses the astrological significance of centaurs, particularly Chiron and Chariklo, and their relevance to current global events. She notes the fall of Assad's regime in Syria, protests in Georgia, and political upheavals in South Korea and the U.S. Edington highlights the discovery of Chiron in 1977 and Chariklo in 1997, emphasizing their roles in healing and transformation. She connects these discoveries to significant historical events, such as the Maastricht Treaty in 1992 and the rise of Putin in Russia. Edington predicts major astrological alignments in 2027-2028, suggesting a period of significant global change and healing. For more from Louise, subscribe to this channel and check the bell to receive notifications when new content is uploaded. Subscribe to Louise's Substack blog for FREE or PAID for daily written updates and more. https://cosmicowlastrology.substack.com/ Check out Louise's Amazon store for books and other products I love and recommend! https://www.amazon.com/shop/cosmicowlastrology-louiseedington Work with the Cosmic Owl: Book a consultation. https://bookme.name/louiseedington/astrology-consultation Follow Louise at her website louiseedington.com. Follow on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/CosmicOwlLouiseEdington/ Louise's fave numerology resource is http://numerology-thenumbersandtheirmeanings.blogspot.com/ ///FOR ENTERTAINMENT PURPOSES ONLY /// FYI I READ EVERY COMMENT AND DELETE INAPPROPRIATE COMMENTS /// This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cosmicowlastrology.substack.com/subscribe

This Day in Legal History: The Amsterdam Treaty Broadens the EUOn October 2, 1997, the Amsterdam Treaty was signed by European Union (EU) delegates, marking a significant step in the evolution of the EU's institutional framework and policy ambitions. The treaty aimed to enhance the efficiency, transparency, and democratic legitimacy of the Union, amending previous agreements like the Maastricht Treaty. One of its key features was strengthening the powers of the European Parliament, giving it greater legislative influence through the co-decision procedure, which allowed it to act as an equal legislator with the Council of the European Union.The Amsterdam Treaty also laid the groundwork for the EU's Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP), aiming for more coordinated diplomatic actions and international influence. It introduced the role of the High Representative for the CFSP to improve coherence in foreign policy. Additionally, the treaty made strides in areas such as justice and home affairs, addressing issues like asylum, immigration, and judicial cooperation across member states. The treaty was also a response to the anticipated enlargement of the EU, as post-Communist countries in Eastern Europe were expected to join, requiring institutional reforms to manage an expanded Union. The Amsterdam Treaty signaled a shift toward a more integrated and politically unified Europe, preparing the EU for the challenges of a growing membership and a more globalized world.Alphabet Inc.'s Google is facing a renewed antitrust lawsuit from Sensory Inc., a voice recognition technology company, accusing the tech giant of monopolistic practices in the voice assistant market. Sensory alleges that Google used its dominance in general search to create barriers preventing consumers from using alternative voice assistants and wakeword software to access non-Google search engines. This lawsuit revives a previous case from April 2022, which was paused to allow other antitrust litigation against Google to proceed. In August, the US District Court for the District of Columbia ruled that Google had illegally monopolized the search market through exclusivity agreements. Sensory claims Google extended this behavior by preventing hardware manufacturers from allowing consumers to choose competing voice assistants with non-Google search engines. Sensory also argues that Google imposes restrictions on wakeword technology in various devices, including smartphones, home electronics, and cars, ensuring competitors like Siri and Bixby default to Google's search engine. Google has not yet commented on the case.Google Hit With Renewed Antitrust Suit Over Voice AssistantsThe US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit has paused a National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) case involving Amazon, following claims that the agency violates constitutional principles. Amazon argues that the NLRB breaches the separation of powers by acting as both prosecutor and judge, after it rejected Amazon's objections to a union election at a Staten Island warehouse. Amazon sought an emergency injunction to halt the NLRB's internal litigation regarding its refusal to bargain with the union. When a lower court didn't rule on the request, Amazon appealed to the Fifth Circuit, which had recently blocked a similar case involving SpaceX. Amazon's lawsuit challenges the constitutional structure of the NLRB, claiming its members are unconstitutionally shielded from removal by the president and that the agency's quasi-judicial powers violate the Seventh Amendment's guarantee of a jury trial. This case is part of a broader wave of constitutional challenges to the NLRB's authority. Neither Amazon nor the NLRB have commented on the ruling.Fifth Circuit Halts Amazon NLRB Case Over Constitutional DisputeThe Biden administration is pressuring U.S. port employers to improve their offer to striking dockworkers from the International Longshoremen's Association (ILA). The strike, now in its second day, has disrupted shipping across dozens of ports from Maine to Texas, affecting goods from food to automobiles and causing significant economic strain. With over 38 ships waiting to dock, the strike could cost the U.S. economy $5 billion per day. Despite a 50% wage hike offer from the United States Maritime Alliance (USMX), the ILA, led by Harold Daggett, is demanding more, including a $5 hourly raise per year and a halt to port automation projects. President Biden has urged foreign ocean carriers, which profited during the pandemic, to agree to a fair contract, while the administration monitors for price gouging. Retailers have initiated backup plans to mitigate potential impacts on the holiday season. Economists warn that while the strike could raise inflation, the broader economic effects depend on its duration. The National Retail Federation and some Republicans are calling on Biden to halt the strike, but he has refused.US port strike backed by White House | Reuters This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.minimumcomp.com/subscribe

The European Union formed in 1992 with the signing of the Maastricht Treaty in the city located at southern tip of the Netherlands. 12 counties initially joined the EU, and this has since grown to 27 member states. The European Union was once described as the “grand experiment.” Experiments are not without challenges… and setbacks. The exit of the United Kingdom—or Brexit—in 2020 was a major disappointment for the EU, but it has otherwise proven successful, albeit fragile and, in many respects, continues to strengthen as a unified citizen-led democracy. The last few years have been tough on the EU. Economic uncertainty, rising inflation, and high energy prices, largely linked to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, have left Europeans with a deepening sense of pessimism. In a survey of Europeans in the 2023 Edelman Trust Barometer, only 20 percent agreed that they or their family will be better off in next five years. Trust in government is low and there is a deepening divide on critical issues.  At the same time, the EU is the largest single market globally today. With a population approaching 450 million people and a GDP of €16 trillion, if it was a country, it would be the world's third largest (by both these metrics). The EU is ultimately a political and economic partnership, but it faces similar challenges to other economies. And these challenges are frequently compounded by the need to find consensus—and often compromise—among the 27 member states on very complex issues. No doubt, that is essentially how democracy works—it's difficult by design—but the EU government and member states do just that: They find consensus and compromises, and they legislate. A recent example is the Artificial Intelligence Act, the first-ever legal framework on AI, which was unanimously endorsed by all 27 member states. Our guest today is Karen Melchior. In 2019, Ms. Melchior became a Member of the European Parliament (MEP). Frustrated with the state of politics in both Denmark and the EU, she first ran for office in 2014 and was elected the following year to the Copenhagen City Council, where she served on the Social Committee and the Health and Care Committee.  Ms. Melchior has worked as a diplomat for the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs and in data protection law and IT security at the Danish Agency for Labor Market and Recruitment. She holds an MA in Law and a Masters of Public Administration. As a MEP, Ms. Melchior serves on three committees: Legal Affairs, Women's Rights and Gender Equality, and Internal Market and Consumer Protection. She is also a member of Renew Europe, the third-largest political group in the European Parliament. In an online biography, Ms. Melchior said the following: “Political systems are created by people. They can also be changed by people. We cannot afford to let our frustrations grow to the point where they overshadow our capacity for action. Hate can be triggered as easily as hope. The society we have built, based on cooperation and freedom, is fragile. We need to fight every day to sustain it. We can achieve a lot if we dare to try! Let's roll up our sleeves, lift our gaze, and work together to create the kind of world we want.” Resources: About MEP Karen Melchior (European Commission) About MEP Karen MelchiorThe EU Artificial Intelligence ActCorporate Sustainability Due Diligence (European Commission) 

Earlier this year, the French politician Jacques Delors died at the age of 98. Delors is best remembered for his time as president of the European Commission from the mid 1980s to the mid 1990s. During that time, the European Community became the European Union. The Delors Commission also laid the groundwork for the single currency through the Maastricht Treaty. One of the main ideas associated with Delors was the concept of a “social Europe.”Our guest today is Aurelie Dianara. She's a research fellow at the University of Évry in Paris. Her book Social Europe, the Road not Taken: The Left and European Integration in the Long 1970s was published in 2022.As Aurelie explains, the idea of “social Europe” originated in the crisis of global capitalism during the 1970s. When it was taken up by Delors and his Commission, it lost its radical connotations and eventually became an alibi for the neoliberal framework of the Eurozone.Long Reads is a Jacobin podcast looking in-depth at political topics and thinkers, both contemporary and historical, with the magazine's longform writers. Hosted by features editor Daniel Finn. Produced by Conor Gillies, music by Knxwledge. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Ahead of June's European Parliament elections, radical right parties are gaining ground across the continent.Rosa Balfour, director of Carnegie Europe, and Stefan Lehne, senior fellow at Carnegie Europe, unpack the causes of this trend and reflect on how it could shape the EU's political future.Carnegie Europe is grateful to the Finnish Ministry of Foreign Affairs for their support of this work.[00:00:00] Intro, [00:01:28] Why the Rise of the Radical Right Matters, [00:11:18] Why the Radical Right Is on the Rise, [00:19:46] How the Radical Right Can Be Contained.Rosa Balfour, September 12, 2023, “Ursula von der Leyen's Three Tiers of Challenges,” Carnegie Europe.Rosa Balfour, February 9, 2023, “The EU Must Reconcile Geopolitics and Democracy,” Carnegie Europe.Rosa Balfour, September 29, 2022, “How a Far-Right Victory in Italy Might Ripple Through the EU,” Carnegie Europe.Rosa Balfour, September 20, 2022, “A Meloni-led government need not spell disaster for Italy's institutions,” Financial Times.Rosa Balfour, March 1, 2022, “Russia through the European prism: populism, politics, and the Russian war on Ukraine,” Encompass Europe.Rosa Balfour et al., 2016. “Europe's Troublemakers – The populist challenge to foreign policy,” European Policy Centre.Stefan Lehne et al., January 18, 2024, “Judy Asks: Can the Far Right in Europe Be Contained?”, Carnegie Europe.Stefan Lehne, October 18, 2022, “The EU and the Creative and Destructive Impact of Crises,” Carnegie Europe.Stefan Lehne, February 8, 2022, “Europe is Struggling, Thirty Years After the Maastricht Treaty,” Carnegie Europe.Stefan Lehne, October 15, 2019, “Could an Illiberal Europe Work?”, Institute for Human Sciences.

This Day in Legal History: The Maastricht Treaty Creates the EUOn this day in legal history, the Maastricht Treaty stands out as a monumental agreement that reshaped the political and economic landscape of Europe. Signed on February 7, 1992, by the members of the European Community, this pivotal treaty marked the foundation of the European Union (EU), a milestone in the integration of European countries. Officially known as the Treaty on the European Union, it signified a new era of cooperation and unity among its signatories.The Maastricht Treaty introduced significant legal and political changes, establishing the EU's three-pillar structure consisting of the European Communities, Common Foreign and Security Policy, and Justice and Home Affairs. This structure was designed to enhance economic collaboration, ensure stability, and promote a more harmonized approach to external relations and internal affairs among the member states.Going into force on November 1, 1993, the treaty set the stage for the introduction of a single European currency, the Euro, and laid the groundwork for the creation of the Schengen Area, enabling passport-free movement across member states. Furthermore, it established the criteria for membership in the EU, known as the Copenhagen criteria, setting the standards for new members aspiring to join the Union.Over the years, the Maastricht Treaty has undergone several amendments through subsequent treaties, such as those of Amsterdam, Nice, and Lisbon, each refining and expanding the EU's powers and scope. These amendments have contributed to the evolution of the EU, making it more efficient and better equipped to face the challenges of the 21st century.Today, the Maastricht Treaty is celebrated not only as the birth certificate of the European Union but also as a groundbreaking achievement in the quest for European integration and peace. Its signing on February 7, 1992, remains a landmark moment in legal and political history, illustrating the power of diplomacy and the enduring quest for unity among diverse nations.A US federal appeals court recently provided the Supreme Court with a potential exit from engaging in a dispute over Donald Trump's claim of immunity from criminal prosecution for alleged election interference. The US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit issued a clear, well-reasoned 57-page decision unanimously rejecting Trump's assertion of absolute immunity for actions taken while in office, stating that such a claim "is unsupported by precedent, history or the text and structure of the Constitution." Legal experts commend the decision for its persuasive reasoning and thorough refutation of Trump's arguments, suggesting that the Supreme Court might be inclined to let the appellate court's ruling stand, avoiding further entanglement in Trump-related controversies.The decision was notable for its unanimous agreement among the judges, including appointees from both George H.W. Bush and Joe Biden, highlighting the legal community's broad consensus against Trump's position. The court criticized Trump's interpretation as "implausible," noting the lack of any precedent for requiring impeachment before criminal prosecution of federal officials. This unified stance from a diverse panel sends a strong signal to the Supreme Court, potentially reducing the likelihood of the justices taking up the case.Trump's response to the decision was sharply critical, framing it as detrimental to the presidency and the country, and his legal team is expected to seek Supreme Court intervention. Meanwhile, the backdrop of the 2024 presidential election adds complexity to the situation, with Trump facing charges related to his actions after the 2020 election and another legal battle regarding his eligibility to appear on Colorado's 2024 primary ballot under the 14th Amendment.Despite the DC Circuit's attempt to simplify the Supreme Court's decision-making process, the unprecedented nature of prosecuting a former president may compel the justices to review the case. Legal scholars are split on whether the Supreme Court will engage, recognizing the clear reasoning of the appellate court but also acknowledging the case's significant implications. Regardless of the Supreme Court's choice, the DC Circuit's decision stands as a robust rebuttal to Trump's claims, reinforcing the principle that no individual is above the law.DC Circuit Gives Supreme Court Easy Out of Trump Immunity FightTrump's New York criminal case, likely first for trial, faces crucial test | ReutersMergers and acquisitions (M&A) lawyers are experiencing a significant increase in workload due to the rising use of earnouts, a financial tool allowing buyers to delay full payment for a transaction until after the seller meets certain milestones. This tool has become particularly popular in recent years, especially in slow economic climates, as it helps bridge the gap between the buyer's and seller's price expectations while protecting buyers from future risks. Earnouts are now a common feature in negotiations, with their usage soaring in the last five years, contrasting sharply with the decline in overall deal volume.According to Bloomberg data, there were $80.2 billion in deals involving contingency payments last year, highlighting the growing reliance on earnouts despite a downturn in the economy and a drop in transaction volumes to $3.6 trillion, the lowest in recent years. The complexity of defining milestones and calculating payments significantly slows down transactions, increasing the legal work required to finalize deals.Earnouts have been particularly prevalent in the health and technology sectors, where early-stage companies often need capital for research and development before proving their concepts. These arrangements require careful negotiation to ensure both buyers and sellers agree on the metrics and accounting practices used to determine payouts.While earnouts can provide sellers with a significant portion of the sale price, they also introduce a level of uncertainty, as sellers must trust buyers to meet milestones that trigger these payments. Lawyers often advise sellers to be satisfied with the initial payment received at closing, treating any earnout payments as a bonus rather than a guaranteed sum.Disputes over earnouts are becoming more common, with an increase in legal dockets mentioning both earnouts and M&A. Lenders also play a critical role in these deals, often setting limits on earnout payments to prioritize repayment terms. Despite the potential for conflict, litigation remains relatively rare, as parties typically find it more beneficial to negotiate resolutions.M&A Lawyers See Flood of Work From Tool That Delays Deal PayoutsMarilyn Mosby, the former top prosecutor of Baltimore, was convicted in federal court for making a false statement on a mortgage application related to purchasing a Florida condominium. This conviction adds to her legal troubles, following two perjury convictions three months prior, where she was found guilty of falsely claiming financial hardship under the COVID-19 related provisions of the federal CARES Act to withdraw funds early from her retirement account. These funds were used for down payments on two Florida vacation properties. Despite being acquitted on a second count of falsifying a mortgage application for another Florida home, Mosby faces significant legal penalties, with the possibility of up to 30 years in federal prison for the mortgage application conviction and up to five years for each perjury count.Mosby, who gained national attention in 2015 for charging police officers in the death of Freddie Gray, had her career trajectory altered dramatically by these charges. At the time of the alleged offenses, she was earning a nearly $250,000 annual salary as Baltimore's state attorney. The case against her included allegations of misrepresenting a financial transaction between her and her husband to secure a lower mortgage rate. Mosby contends that the charges against her were politically motivated, aimed at undermining her re-election bid. The sentencing hearing for both cases has not yet been scheduled by U.S. District Judge Lydia Griggsby.Ex-top Baltimore prosecutor convicted of falsifying mortgage application | Reuters Get full access to Minimum Competence - Daily Legal News Podcast at www.minimumcomp.com/subscribe

Check out The Jack & 'Chill Podcast here!http://atozenglishpodcast.com/episodeshttps://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-jack-chill-podcast/id1709902691https://redcircle.com/shows/the-jack-and-chill-podcastHere are a few notable historical events that happened on November 1 in the past:1512 - Michelangelo's fresco on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in Vatican City was unveiled to the public.1765 - The Stamp Act went into effect in the American colonies, leading to widespread protests and opposition, which contributed to the American Revolution.1950 - Puerto Rican nationalists attempted to assassinate U.S. President Harry S. Truman at the Blair House in Washington, D.C.1952 - The first hydrogen bomb was successfully detonated by the United States during the "Ivy Mike" test on Enewetak Atoll in the Pacific.1963 - South Vietnam's President Ngo Dinh Diem was assassinated in a coup d'état, marking a significant turning point in the Vietnam War.1993 - The European Union (EU) was established with the signing of the Maastricht Treaty, formally known as the Treaty on European Union.2000 - The United Nations Security Council adopted Resolution 1322, which demanded that Israel cease the use of force against Palestinians and called for a withdrawal of Israeli troops from Palestinian territories.2013 - India launched its first interplanetary mission, the Mars Orbiter Mission (Mangalyaan), which successfully entered orbit around Mars in September 2014.These are just a few historical events that took place on November 1 in different years. Keep in mind that many more events, both significant and lesser-known, have occurred on this day throughout history.Podcast Website:https://atozenglishpodcast.com/a-to-z-this-day-in-world-history-november-1st/Social Media:Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/671098974684413/Tik Tok:@atozenglish1Instagram:@atozenglish22Twitter:@atozenglish22A to Z Facebook Page:https://www.facebook.com/theatozenglishpodcastCheck out our You Tube Channel:https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCds7JR-5dbarBfas4Ve4h8ADonate to the show: https://app.redcircle.com/shows/9472af5c-8580-45e1-b0dd-ff211db08a90/donationsRobin and Jack started a new You Tube channel called English Word Master. You can check it out here:https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2aXaXaMY4P2VhVaEre5w7ABecome a member of Podchaser and leave a positive review!https://www.podchaser.com/podcasts/the-a-to-z-english-podcast-4779670Join our Whatsapp group: https://forms.gle/zKCS8y1t9jwv2KTn7Intro/Outro Music: Daybird by Broke for Freehttps://freemusicarchive.org/music/Broke_For_Free/Directionless_EP/Broke_For_Free_-_Directionless_EP_-_03_Day_Bird/https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/legalcodehttps://freemusicarchive.org/music/eaters/simian-samba/audrey-horne/Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-a-to-z-english-podcast/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Since its conception in 1993, the European Union has faced multiple political attacks and crises. But it has prevailed through it all… so far. With a convergence to right-wing populism happening around the world, can its fight to uphold democracy continue? Dermot Hodson is the author of Circle of Stars: A History of the EU and the People Who Made It and a Professor of Political Economy and Digital Technologies at Loughborough University London. He joins Alex Andreou in The Bunker to discuss how the EU endures, and of course, Brexit. “As soon as the Maastricht Treaty was signed, it was clear something was different.” – Dermot Hodson. “With every crisis we're told it's about to collapse.” – Dermot Hodson. “If we look at Donald Tusk's elections it's a minor miracle… because by many standards that was not a free and fair election.” – Dermot Hodson Support us on Patreon: www.patreon.com/bunkercast  Written and presented by Alex Andreou. Producer: Chris Jones. Audio production: Alex Rees and Jade Bailey. Managing Editor: Jacob Jarvis. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. Music by Kenny Dickinson. THE BUNKER is a Podmasters Production. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Why the ratification of the Maastricht Treaty was a significant moment for the EU? Who are the right-wing populists in the EU and how has their modus operandi changed throughout the decades? Why did the national leaders engage in the EU politics? In this conversation with RevDem editor Kasia Krzyżanowska, Dermot Hodson talks about his most recent book Circle of Stars. A History of the EU and the People Who Made It published by Yale University Press.

JEREMY NIEBOER was educated at Harrow School and Oriel College Oxford. After a period practising as a member of the Bar in Kings Bench Walk he was later admitted as a solicitor becoming a partner in two City law firms. He specialised in corporate work, including mergers and acquisitions, capital market public offerings, private equity transactions and commercial law. Hestill acts for a few long-standing clients. His first encounter with any challenge to the accepted doctrine of ‘global warming' came through his contact with Christopher Booker, whom Jeremy first met when acting as lead solicitor on the application by Lord Rees-Mogg to restrain ratification of the Maastricht Treaty. Christopher himself published his essential work The Real Global Warming Disaster in 2009. Just at the time of its publication, there was a public meeting in Church House addressed by Professor Plimer in which he succinctly set out the fundamental scientific flaws of alleged CO2 driven global warming. It was this that set Jeremy on a path of enquiry and research. Jeremy has since spoken at numerous meetings as to the want of any tenable scientific basis forthe vast proposed expenditure on the folly of de-carbonisation. He published his first booklet on climate alarmism with the Bruges Group in 2010, A Lesson in Democracy, and has been a leadspeaker at public meetings and debates on the subject. Nieboer's Climate trilogy, available on Amazon: All is Well, All Will Be Well CO2 Nature's gift Eco-Socialism Jeremy mentioned the videos of Michel van Biezen: https://www.youtube.com/@MichelvanBiezen/featured ========= About Tom Nelson: https://linktr.ee/tomanelson1 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL89cj_OtPeenLkWMmdwcT8Dt0DGMb8RGR Twitter: https://twitter.com/tan123 Substack: https://tomn.substack.com/ About Tom: https://tomn.substack.com/about

Show Notes and Transcript New York Times bestselling author and award winning journalist Richard Poe always gives great context and depth to news stories so he returns to Hearts of Oak for a leftfield conversation concerning Britain and Africa.  Last year, Italy's Prime Minister, Georgia Meloni suddenly started denouncing French neo-colonialism, blaming them for keeping Africa poor and forcing the inhabitants to flee to Europe.  Richard asks if she is focussing in the right direction, is it not the British who are destabilising Africa through economic levers and intelligence operations?  We have seen African governments falling like dominoes with 7 coups in just three years.  What lies behind these and are they connected or just purely random? Richard Poe is a New York Times-bestselling author and award-winning journalist. He has written widely on business, science, history and politics. His books include The Shadow Party, co-written with David Horowitz; The Einstein Factor, co-written with Win Wenger; Perfect Fear: Four Tales of Terror; Black Spark, White Fire; the WAVE series of network marketing books; and many more. Richard was formerly editor of David Horowitz's FrontPageMag, contributing editor of NewsMax, senior editor of SUCCESS magazine, reporter for the New York Post, and managing editor of the East Village Eye. Connect with Richard... WEBSITE: https://www.richardpoe.com/ TWITTER: https://twitter.com/RealRichardPoe?s=20 SUBSTACK: https://richardpoe.substack.com/ BOOKS: https://amzn.eu/d/18lNMtp Interview recorded 8.9.23 *Special thanks to Bosch Fawstin for recording our intro/outro on this podcast. Check out his art https://theboschfawstinstore.blogspot.com/ and follow him on GETTR https://gettr.com/user/BoschFawstin and Twitter https://twitter.com/TheBoschFawstin?s=20  To sign up for our weekly email, find our social media, podcasts, video, livestreaming platforms and more...https://heartsofoak.org/connect/ Please subscribe, like and share!   Subscribe now Transcript (Hearts of Oak) Hello, Hearts of Oak, and welcome to another interview coming up in a moment with Richard Poe, who re-joined us. He was last with us when we looked at his book, The Shadow Party, looking at George Soros and his control, power, and influence. And today we look at something completely different, and that is a thread that he put up on Twitter titled, Are the British Destabilizing Africa? And this is from a video that Giorgia Meloni, the Italian PM, put up denouncing French neo-colonialism and I often think well the Brits did good in Africa but maybe the French and the Belgians and the Germans and they were a bit naughty. But Richard brings his deep understanding, his delves deep into this subject and, exposes maybe why that thinking is not necessarily correct, how the British have been closely involved, look an economic side of it but also the intelligence services and how they operate and look in some of the recent coups, maybe what lies behind that a little bit. So much to pack into this huge subject. Richard Poe, it is wonderful to have you back with us again. Thank you so much for joining us again today. (Richard Poe) Thanks, Peter, it's great to be here.  Great, and we're going to go through quite a bit. Just before we jump in, I'll just say to the viewers, that Richard is well worth following because his tweets actually bring something quite different. Bring the historical side to a lot of what happens and I think the conservatives movement can often be guilty of kind of in your face what's happened that morning and by the afternoon it's old news and just for our viewers and listeners I think Richard brings context often to stories that are happening but whenever Richard is last on we look through his book The Shadow Party. How George Soros, Hillary Clinton and the 60s radicals seize control of the Democratic Party. That is in the description for you to go back and have a look at and delve deeper into that topic. But he is a bestseller on many other books but that's what we stuck on and of course former editor of Front Page Magazine and we've had David Horowitz on with us before. But Richard there, people can obviously find you @RealRichardPoe, richardpoe.com, the website, and Richard Poe on Substack. Everything is in there for the viewer and listeners to take advantage of. Richard, one tweet that caught my eye, and we will delve a little bit into that, is on Africa and the Brits. And as much as I like blaming the French for everything as a Brit, that is our national pastime, sometimes the British have been at fault over history for a few things. If it hasn't been the French, it's probably been the Brits or the Belgians maybe. But there was a statement I think by Georgia Meloni, the Premier of Italy, and she had started denouncing French neo-colonialism and you had put up about the British destabilizing Africa. Do you want to maybe just begin with that and set out why we can't point the fingers solely at the French? Right. Well, basically, I knew something about, let's call it the neo-colonial infrastructure of Africa, because I was actually hired by a think tank, oh, more than 10 years ago to do a paper on that subject. And for various reasons, it was never published, but it was extremely eye-opening. What I basically discovered, to my astonishment, was that the EU, and in particular Great Britain, France as well, but really Great Britain more than anyone else, had essentially continued their colonial relationship beyond the date when these various African countries supposedly became independent, that what they actually did, they being the various European colonial powers, is they simply set up alternate structures through various kinds of diplomatic channels and the UN system as it was being set up. So that the UN today. Really is a neo-colonial structure. And that's really what I discovered in this research, which again, never saw the light of day. A topic I may write about someday in my memoirs. But so I had studied this in some detail, these NGOs and international treaties and such that had been set up for the very purpose of making sure that those European countries which had formerly owned colonies in Africa continued to maintain that relationship. So specifically the Anglophone colonies that were English speaking, maintained their relationship with Great Britain. The Francophone colonies maintained their relationship with France and so on. And in the 1957 Treaty of Rome, establishing the European Economic Commission, or community. This relationship was actually formalized, whereas the countries which had been former colonies, and I think the way they put it in the treaty, they didn't call them colonies, but they said countries in Africa having a special relationship to members of the EEC, would have a certain kind of membership in the EEC. I think they were called associated members. And they would have a special diplomatic and economic relationship with the EEC, trade privileges and so forth. So maybe because I researched this so deeply, I don't want to bore your viewers with so many details, but the bottom line is, so in the last few weeks on Twitter, we've suddenly seen an uproar from, especially from certain influencers with these coups that have been happening in Africa. In particular, there have been six coups in three years. In a number of countries, most of which are former French colonies. In fact, all of which are former French colonies except Sudan, and the cry has gone out that at last the freedom-loving people of Africa are getting on their feet and overthrowing the yoke of French colonialism. This map has been getting wide circulation and all this enthusiasm from people on Twitter about overthrowing French colonialism. So I thought this was remarkable for a couple of different reasons. First of all, I thought French colonialism was overthrown a long time ago, or at least that's the official story. I remember as a kid, you know, in the 1960s, that was the big thing. The end of colonialism. It's all over. And, you know, these nationalist leaders in Africa who had become, you know, the first presidents of the newly independent countries. These were big pop culture heroes in the 60s. And so now so many decades later to say, finally at last French colonialism is being overthrown. So on the one hand I thought that was interesting because it broke with the pop culture narrative that we were all brought up with that colonialism ended decades ago. All of a sudden it's here, it's now, and it's being overthrown in the year 2023. But the other thing that caught my attention is that they were specifically referring to French colonialism, when in fact there were several colonial powers, in Africa. There was Great Britain, France, Portugal, Spain, Italy, Germany, the list goes on. And in the case of Italy and Germany, their colonies were taken away because of world wars. But still, there were several colonial powers that remained, which still considered themselves officially, quote unquote, responsible for their former colonies, which meant, especially in the case of France, that they would intervene militarily in those countries when they felt there was some need to do so. And the French in particular have done this probably more than any other quote unquote former colonial power, but the British do it too. They just have a more subtle way of doing it. And so this is what I discovered that think tank research had done more than 10 years ago. So that was the second reason that I was, or the third reason that I was surprised by this sudden enthusiasm for throwing off the yoke of French colonialism, because I knew that in fact there was such a thing as French colonialism, and there was in fact such a thing as EU colonialism. The EU itself as a bureaucratic entity has directly involved itself in the management and admin of the African continent. And so I knew all these things, but most people don't. And it just was surprising to me to suddenly see this acknowledgment of that colonial relationship which in the past had been very controversial and hushed up and denied. Can I ask, because I've been reading a book on tax havens and delving into that world, understanding about money flows, and the book basically starts with the French, takes Gabon as an example of how the French set up the president there, and the coup has supposedly removed his son Ali Bongo and they use this as an example of how the French control large parts of Africa and I read that as a Brit thinking you see France have been really bad we're actually Africa should be thanking the Brits for what we've done for education roads and is is that a very simplistic view of Africa.  Well, when you say simplistic you mean the view that Africa was actually better off under colonialism?  Yes, because I know I've seen stuff and I've seen even you retweeted the thought that actually what Africa needs is for those colonial powers to go back and to fix it once again. That obviously would not be a popular view in many parts of Africa with the whole conversation about payments, colonial payments, repatriations, all of that. But my simplistic view is, well, Britain could actually fix that, build a few more roads, a few more hospitals, a few more schools, and life would be good again. Is that view extremely simplistic? Well, I would simply have to confess that I don't know, in answer to that question. The fact is, what I'm learning now, excuse me, the research that I'm doing now about the American Revolution and the economic and financial reasons for, the reasons why our founding fathers wanted independence from England in the first place, I'm really learning a lot about the colonial system and how it works. And you know, there are people in America who say essentially the same thing. We're not quite in as bad of a fix as Africa yet, although we seem to be headed that direction pretty quickly. There are people in America who are monarchists and who are questioning whether we were better off under the British, as strange as that might seem to you. And you're seeing that more and more. I think it's being pushed a little bit on social media in some quarters as a kind of PSYOP, and the fact is, you really have to dig to some extent to try to figure out, you know, why did the founding fathers feel so strongly that they needed to get away from England? And there actually were some really compelling reasons, most of which had to do with an extremely oppressive economic system that was enforced by law, in particular by the so-called Navigation Act, whose effect was basically to keep the colonies by force of law in a situation where we had to produce raw materials, food, crops, tobacco, cotton, things like that, and to sell them very cheaply in England and then to get all of our manufacturers from England, where they were beginning to have their industrial revolution and we had to buy them more expensively. And this is the heart and soul of the colonial relationship. The colony produces raw materials and food and sells them to the, very cheaply. The mother country then sells us, the colony, everything that we need in terms of manufactured goods, but they sell them quite expensively. And so there is a permanently enforced balance of trade, which is wildly disadvantageous to the colonized state. And this system is enforced by local corruption, because in order to make such a system work, you have to get local people to support the colonial relationship, and you make them very, very rich, but at the expense of the majority of people. And the best illustration for that in the United States is the pre-Civil War South, the Antebellum South, where you had a cotton-producing economy, which was almost entirely run for Britain. Almost all the cotton was sold, I think more than 80 percent, was sold to Great Britain, which was, of course, at that time the leading producer of cotton textiles in the world. And so some people, like our little Harris family in Gone with the Wind, got very, very rich selling cotton to England. But the way they did it was by enslaving people and making them work for free as slaves. And it was argued at the time of the American Civil War and in the years leading up to it that this colonial system, that essentially the American South had been recolonized by England and that slavery was the result of that. This was argued by certain economists at the time who were sympathetic to the Northern position. They were saying that the institution of slavery in the South was a direct result of the elite southern planters whose livelihood depended on Great Britain, on trading with them. Always having to try to please their British buyers by keeping the price low because the British did have other places where they could go. They were constantly trying to develop other sources of high-quality cotton in Brazil, in India, in Egypt, in other places. And so the southern planters who were what modern scholars would call a colonial elite, they were a small portion of the population who enforced essentially a British colonial system because it made them rich personally, but it was at the cost of everyone else, where the black slaves and the poor whites as well, essentially there wasn't much left for them at the end. And they weren't allowed to develop an industrial economy because that's not what the British wanted. They wanted the South to remain an agrarian society that devoted itself to selling cotton. So this situation actually led directly to the American Civil War, which was the most terrible episode in our history. And I wrote an article about this called How the British caused the American Civil War. What happened is the North started to, trying to impose tariffs on overseas trade for the specific purpose of discouraging the southern planters from selling to England and the British did what they do when their colonial interests are threatened. They sent in their secret agents and their provocateurs and one in particular named Thomas Cooper, who was a British, apparently, intelligence agent. He had first gotten his start going to France and helping to stir up the French Revolution. Then he moved to South Carolina. He became a very prominent, respected person. He was a judge. And in 1828, he delivered a speech calling for secession of the South. And this speech is widely recognized by historians as having been the beginning of the Southern secession movement. So because of that and various other manoeuvres, including material assistance, which Great Britain gave to the South during the Civil War. It is very clear and in fact undeniable, although it's been scrubbed pretty much from our history books. It is undeniable that Great Britain caused and instigated the American Civil War and did everything in their power to help the South win. And you can see British newspapers and political speeches by British statesmen. There was no question that they were on the side of the South and they wanted the South to win and they tried very hard to intervene, including having the French put a very large army into Mexico, putting a lot of British troops into Canada. So, what I'm saying by this, Peter, is that when you look behind the scenes, when you look at the surface, you might think that colonialism, or British colonialism, is seemingly benign, and that it actually helps people who are in a lower phase of development to develop infrastructure and trade and education and health and all these things, that it brings in money, it brings in expertise, and all of that. But when you look a a little deeper, you realize that the intention of the colonializers or the colonizers, whatever. Is not fundamentally a good intention. That what they want is to set up economic relationships that are actually disadvantageous to the colonized country in the long run. And to maintain those relationships, even if it means tearing apart a country in civil war, and in our case a country of people of European and British and Irish stock, especially at that time. It wasn't even a matter of race, you know. It's just when those economic interests are threatened, the colonizing power becomes very ruthless and the colonial elites become loyal to a foreign country instead of to their own country, which is what happened in our South. So, on the one hand, yes, I would agree that this question of were certain parts of the world under colonialism, I don't want to answer with a knee-jerk response to say, oh, out with the colonizers, it's racist, it's sexist, it's homophobic, it's whatever. Yeah, I just threw in homophobic just for the heck of it. Actually, I don't even say that. But I mean, what I'm saying is I hear what you're saying, I hear your question and I absolutely don't go with the knee jerk. Woke or politically correct, autumn idea that colonialism was totally bad. I don't go with it. I think it's a complicated question. But I also think that my research into the colonial past of my own country, the United States shows that our relationship with England was in fact terribly damaging to our country. Even though there were good aspects to it as well, because our own industrialization of the building of the Great American Railroads, all of that was funded by British capital. So it's two sides of the same coin. But if you have a foreign country meddling in your affairs and doing things like causing secessions and civil wars, that's a very serious matter. So what would, what would Africa really be like? The narrative now is, well, look, it's in a hopeless condition. The dictators, genocides, wars, constant military coups, and so forth. And if the colonizing powers came back, maybe everything would be better and nicer. But it's not always in the interests of the colonizing powers to make everything nicer and better. And I guess that's what I'm saying. And I also would raise the question as to what extent, these troubles that we're having today are actually caused by covert interference, by the West and by the former colonial powers. And, I think in this case that we're talking about now with these former French colonies, there's some kind of psy-op going on where, for reasons, let's say reasons unknown. Whoever controls the political discourse on Twitter is pretending to be all excited about these military coups and pretending that it all has to do with some mass movement from the ground level of people who want to throw off the yoke of French colonialism. But the fact is, first of all, these countries, most of them have had many, many coups. It's not at all unusual. They're showing this map, they're saying, oh my gosh, six coups in three years. That's actually not so unusual, for those countries or others in Africa. And the other thing that's kind of weird about it is, are these really French colonies or former French colonies, or are they just nominally French colonies and actually some other countries among whom is Great Britain are actually calling the shots there. And so it gets into this, and so I guess on one level I'm saying yes it is it is simplistic if we assume that whatever the news tells us is correct that once upon a time there was colonial Africa then the colonial powers all left for some unstated reason, which is never really adequately explained. And then supposedly these African countries were on their own and then supposedly all hell broke loose and they all started killing and massacring each other. I think it probably is a little naïve to accept that narrative at face value. I am not at all convinced that that's exactly what happened. And what instead appears to have happened is that the old colonial system was replaced by a new colonial system, basically run by the United Nations system, and that these disorders were allowed to go on. And in fact, in some cases, encouraged to go on for all kinds of reasons. I'll give you one example.  Yeah, give me an example and then I'll bring up another piece you had up, so go with your example. One famous example, of course, was the Rwandan genocide in 1994, where now Rwanda was a French colony and, in fact, while the genocide was happening, there were French troops there who were supposedly trying to stop it, and they were very sharply criticized for being strangely ineffective in not being able to stop it, especially since they were modern troops with modern weaponry and these people who were committing the genocide were supposedly armed with only machetes. So there were questions about the French handling of it. But even beyond that, the result of this genocide was that Rwanda, was subsequently taken into the British Commonwealth. Whereas before it had been in the French sphere of influence. And the normal traditional rule of the Commonwealth is that countries who are admitted to it are supposed to be former British colonies, but Rwanda wasn't. It was taken as a special case because the French had supposedly done such a terrible job of not protecting their people that it passed into the proprietorship of Great Britain. And so, I'm not the only person who has to raise an eyebrow and ask the question, qui bono? I mean, if Rwanda passed from French control to British control, and if the pretext for that passage, was the Rwanda genocide, would it be out of line to ask, what caused the genocide in the first place? And to what extent was it possibly even instigated by some foreign power, as was the American Civil War, as we're now learning more than 150 years after the fact. So that's one example. I could give others, but you said you had a point you wanted to make. Well, because you obviously, in a lot of the information you put out, you're talking about the intelligence services of the West and how they work behind the scenes. But then also there's the economic side. And this was, this is kind of the article I was touching on, let me bring up, this was a Daily Mail article, Recolonize Africa. And you said that it seems to be saying, and this is an old article, 2005, but it gives historical context once again, says it appears to say that Africa's become so violent and lawless that most African countries will welcome, kind of the West, colonial powers coming back in again. But then you mentioned the kind of colonial economic side, I think, when you look at the EU and how the EU keeps a lot of the countries poor through their tax and tariff systems is, yeah. I'm wondering where does, again, the fault lies at the economic side? Is it still the intelligence services working very much within those countries? Is it a mixture of those two? Yeah, what are your thoughts on that?  Well, I would go so far as to say that I don't believe that the colonial powers of Europe specifically, ever let go of their colonies, especially France and Britain. I think they simply found a different way to administer them and actually a cheaper and more efficient way where they didn't have to physically occupy these countries anymore and they didn't have to be held responsible for things like mass murders and genocides and coups and so forth, that they could have a more rough and ready kind of environment and they didn't have to worry about looking good in the face of world opinion. So in some ways it's actually a better situation for them than the situation they had before where they really had to make everything look good because their flag was flying over these various countries and if they committed terrible atrocities or allowed atrocities to be committed there would be consequences. Other European countries would criticize them and would take advantage. And we see that, for example, in the ruckus that the British propagandists made at the turn of the century over the Belgian Congo, where terrible atrocities were committed by King Leopold II in the push to harvest rubber, and he basically enslaved the whole people of the Congo and subjected them to terrible, inhumane practices. And the British, for their own reasons, made a huge, big deal about that. This was back in the turn of the century, of the 20th century, in the 1900s. And they made a huge ruckus about it and said, oh, how terrible, look how badly he's treating these people. The part of that story you never hear about is that the British themselves, British interests were heavily involved in the rubber trade in the Belgian Congo and were taking part in all of it. That part is never mentioned. Likewise, there was a similar ruckus in Peru, again over rubber harvesting. Now Peru was officially never anyone's colony since its independence from Spain, but in fact a lot of people don't know that the British basically exercised an informal control of Peru and some say that they still do to this day. And there was another big public relations ruckus over cruelties related to the rubber trade in Peru, which again British missionaries and human rights activists were leading. And it was somehow effectively concealed that the British themselves were deeply involved in committing these atrocities. So it's really a world of smoke and mirrors, where propaganda and psychological operations have really been part of the whole toolkit of colonialism really since the very beginning, and I believe that the reason the British became the greatest and most successful colonizers in the world is specifically because they are the best propagandists and the best at psychological operations. They basically invented modern psyops, and they're the very best in that field to this day, and that's really what it's all about. It's all about how to do things in foreign countries without seeming to be doing them, or to blame other people for doing them, such as blaming King Leopold II of Belgium for all these atrocities, and he certainly was guilty of them, but leaving out the part that British financial interests were in there very heavily, helping him to commit them. So this continues to go on today, where we have now a very fluid situation, a neo-colonial situation, as the left, as the Marxists named it decades ago, where the colonial colonizing countries are still there, and they're still probably just as much in control as ever were, but no longer held responsible to keep order in the same way they used to be. So it's really kind of a better situation for them. They can get away with a lot more. Now in these, the interesting thing in that article by Andrew Roberts, the British historian, he wrote that article in 2005. A lot of people in our, as you pointed out, in our social media culture think 2005 was, you know, like the last millennium or something. But actually, it's very important to understand what was happening then because, what actually happened is that the EU was in the process then of setting up an elaborate neo-colonial structure which basically controls Africa to this day. And now I mentioned that in the original treaty of Rome setting up the EEC back in 1957, they already had a formal relationship with past and present colonies in Africa which they recognized in that treaty. They call it a special relationship. And in the 1990s, some strange things started to happen. Which is that as the EU became activated and the Maastricht Treaty and the Eurozone, and it started becoming a reality, this thing that people have been talking about since the 1890s and before, It started becoming a reality in the 90s and immediately the cry went up to form an African union. And there was a strategy developed called the Joint EU Africa Strategy. And the motto of this EU Africa group was one Europe, one Africa. And what they wanted was a United Europe dealing one-on-one with the United Africa. So they wouldn't, that is so the European countries would not have to negotiate separately with each little country in Africa. They would have one authority controlling the entire continent with whom they could make their deals and their treaties, whatever those were. So interestingly, Muammar Gaddafi, the late dictator or president of Libya. He came out in, I forget what year it was. It could have been, it was around 19, in the late 1990s, I think. He made a very controversial speech in Libya where he said that the Arab Maghreb Union was a farce. That now the Maghreb is basically all of North Africa except Egypt. And in 1989, I think they had come together to form a regional economic structure called the Arab Maghreb Union. And Gaddafi had been one of the leading people pushing that. It was actually his brainchild, supposedly. But then, I think it was 15 years later, he gave this speech saying, let me tell you the truth. The reason we formed this Maghreb Union was because the EU forced us to do it. They said, we're not going to do business with you anymore because it's too burdensome dealing with each country unless you, unless all the Maghreb countries of North Africa come together in a union, we're not going to even talk to you. So on that basis, Gaddafi got up in circa 1989, and using the language of third world-ism and the non-aligned movement and Arab nationalism. Said that what we need to do is form this union so we can all be strong, all us Arab-speaking countries in Africa together. But then 15 years later, he openly and publicly confessed actually the EU is the one who wanted us to get together, had nothing to do with Arab nationalism, and they basically forced us to do it. And so then he said, let's dissolve this union, let's get out of it. Oh, it was in 2003, I just remembered. It was in 2003, so this was post 9-1-1, it was after Afghanistan and Iraq had been invaded, so things weren't looking too good for Arab nationalism at that moment. And so Gaddafi, getting with the spirit of the time, said the Arabs are finished, they're a laughingstock, and we want nothing to do with Arabs anymore, even though we're Arab speaking. We are now African. And then he came up with a new idea. Let's have an African union, he said. Now, actually, he had already proposed the African Union. It came into being in the year 2000, and supposedly Gaddafi was the one who thought of it and was the founding father of this African Union. But, you know, in 2003, he confessed that the last time he pulled that manoeuvre with the Arab Maghreb Union, it was the EU forcing him to do it. Should we imagine that on the second go-round with the African, that he suddenly became the third world Nationalist that he always claimed to be or was he simply like Scarlett O'Hara and all those southern planters in the United States in the antebellum South, was he simply, lining his own pockets by doing business with the colonizers and going where he thought the power was. Well, it looks like the latter. And that's how colonial elites work. You know, people are not that idealistic, unfortunately. I wish they were, but let's face it, they're not. You know, people will go where the money is, and that's just how it is. And so they formed this African Union to the cries from the EU of one Europe, one Africa, And they started signing all kinds of treaties and putting forth all kinds of policies that were completely mysterious and unknown to the African people who have enough of a struggle trying to get democratic government as it is. But now all of a sudden, whatever democratic structures had been set up at a national level in the individual countries had suddenly become obsolete because now the EU was talking directly to these officials in charge of this thing called the African Union. And the African Union was empowered to make treaties that could be enforced on all African countries. Imagine that. So, now that we've had the African Union since the year 2000. And one of its rules, supposedly, is that you're supposed to have free elections which are monitored by international authorities and absolutely no military coups. Military coups are strictly not allowed. And yet, since then, we've had the Arab Spring. These colour revolutions and civil wars in the Western powers, and now we're having these, continuing to have these coups, which everybody is cheering about on Twitter. All of this is supposedly, supposed to be impossible and illegal under the African Union and should trigger military interventions by the African Union. I think they call it the African Union Peace and Security, something or other, which basically mobilizes peacekeeping troops and also arranges to have European troops to come in, in order to fix problems, whatever they are. And so the mechanism actually exists in Africa probably better than anywhere else in the world where you have a transnational authority, the African Union, which actually has the real power and the real willingness to bring in heavy military force whenever they like, to stop things like military coups from happening, and yet they're still happening. Why is that? Why is that? I'll pick up on one thing as we finish. Realizing the Gaddafi started African Union changes my whole concept of it. That blows me away. But the fact that when you look at the EU, the EU, European Union, has been hugely successful at control within Europe economically. There are lots of questions that the EU has never been able to rise above and be a economic bloc, I guess, to rival the US, which was always the dream, probably, of the EU and the European Economic Community before that. But it's full control of EU members and if the EU can punish and has done with those in Eastern Europe for many violations on tax, on faith, on immigration. But the African Union, you don't hear of it as having that much say or power. It hasn't brought together those countries. Can we just finish just maybe touching on that, that kind of comparison between one bloc in Europe that has worked certainly for control, the African Union, is that by design or are there other reasons behind that? Well, I think it's by design that the African Union is weak. Is that what you're saying? That it really doesn't exercise the authority it's supposed to. I think it's by design. I think it's doing exactly what it's supposed to do, which is to create a central authority for European powers, especially Great Britain, which really masterminded the whole thing, in my opinion. And if you, I would just like to leave your audience with one point, which, is that article you showed by Andrew Roberts, where he said it's time to to recolonize Africa. That was in 2005. That was right after Tony Blair had done his African, Africa commission and they had mapped out this whole plan for basically re-colonizing Africa through the African Union and through other regional structures. Now in that article, Andrews actually says, he actually states that the French and the Germans will not be allowed to re-colonize Africa, that only English speaking countries. He actually says the United States and Great Britain, and with the support of New Zealand, Canada, and Australia, will be the ones to make this happen. The French, because of their cruelty in the past and their mishandling of all kinds of colonial situations, will not be allowed to have anything to do with it, nor will the Germans, because look what they did when they were colonialists back before World War I. You think 2005 was a long, long time ago, but he, Roberts actually evoked what the Germans did before World War I as a reason why they will not be allowed to take part in this great project of colonizing Africa. So now all of a sudden we're getting all this propaganda from Giorgia Meloni of Italy and from big influencers like Ian Miles Cheong. I don't mean to single him out, but he wrote this extraordinary tweet saying, yes, the people of West Africa are rising up against French colonialism. We're going towards a multipolar world. Hooray. Some words to that effect. He linked it to the whole idea of multi-polarism. And what is that all about? That's about overthrowing the global hegemon, the USA, which is supposedly the cause of all evil in the world. Overthrowing the USA, stripping us of our power, so then power can be decentralized among various countries. And so certain influencers such as Ian Miles Cheong is out there celebrating and saying, yes, out with the French, out with the French. Is it just a coincidence that Andrew Roberts, when he first publicized this recolonization plan, he expressly said the French are out. We will not allow the French to take part in this now, all of a sudden, so many years later we're hearing that cry again that the French are out. And some of these French countries, French colonies, so-called, one of them Guinea, maybe on another, we don't have time to talk about it now, but I have massive evidence that the British are really effectively in control in that country, Guinea, and running things in an extraordinary way, quite openly, including Rio Tinto, the mining company, the Anglo-Australian mining company, and Guinea has more than one half of the world's bauxite deposits, aluminium ore. And Rio Tinto has been trying to get in control of that, working with the Chinese. And it's interesting that, you know, the cry goes out, you know, from all the usual sources, the US State Department and what have you, oh the Chinese are taking over in Africa, that's one of the reasons why we have to go back in there and otherwise the Chinese are going to take over everything. But I notice whenever the British get involved with something, they somehow bring the Chinese with them. I'm not sure why they do that, but it's a little strange, what can I say? Well, we'll leave it on a cliff-hanger, that, about the British involvement there, and we'll pick up on that. Richard, I really do appreciate coming on. As I said at the beginning, I love reading your tweets and how you expand on so much. So thank you for joining us today and going through that Africa tweet, which is one of your latest ones. Thank you for your time. Thank you, Peter. Always a pleasure.

GUEST HOST: Jeremy Beck filling in for Dean Mackin. On today's show, Dr. Robert Verkerk discusses several critical subjects. First, he addresses the concerning issue of PFAS "forever chemicals" and evaluates whether government authorities are adequately acknowledging their toxicity. Moving on, he explores the potential dangers associated with 5G technology. Dr. Verkerk also provides updates from the Alliance for Natural Health International, highlighting two key points: the factors contributing to accelerated cancer rates and autoimmune flare-ups, and the significant drop in birth rates in England and Wales, delving into the underlying reasons behind this decline. Later, Jeremy Nieboer discusses CO2's role in climate and energy. He questions if recent events are making politicians realize its importance. He critiques costly Climate Change approaches and challenges past energy policies. He points out limitations of wind, solar, and biomass sources. Despite subsidies, low-carbon sources contribute minimally to the UK's energy. He counters the idea of CO2 as a suffocating blanket, emphasizing its vital role. Nieboer suggests more CO2 could mean surplus food and lower prices, especially for the disadvantaged. GUEST 1 OVERVIEW: Dr Robert Verkerk founded the Alliance for Natural Health International (ANH-Intl) in 2002 and has acted as its executive and scientific director since this time. He has directed legal actions to protect the right to natural health and has campaigned on diverse issues including against toxins in the food supply, in drinking water and in the environment, as well as against genetically modified foods, gene editing and transhumanism. He has been among the leading scientists exposing the distorted science during the COVID-19 crisis as well as in risk analysis as used by drug and food regulators. He is a recognised pioneer in the development of novel, scientifically rational risk-benefit assessment approaches as well as a new, sustainable model for community-based health regeneration. He is also the scientific director of the Alliance for Natural Health's US office and a Fellow of the American College of Nutrition.  GUEST 2 OVERVIEW: JEREMY NIEBOER was educated at Harrow School and Oriel College Oxford. After a period practising as a member of the Bar in Kings Bench Walk he was later admitted as a solicitor becoming a partner in two City law firms. He specialised in corporate work, including mergers and acquisitions, capital market public offerings, private equity transactions and commercial law. He still acts for a few long-standing clients. His first encounter with any challenge to the accepted doctrine of 'global warming' came through his contact with Christopher Booker, whom Jeremy first met when acting as lead solicitor on the application by Lord Rees-Mogg to restrain ratification of the Maastricht Treaty. Christopher himself published his essential work "The Real Global Warming Disaster" in 2009. Just at the time of its publication, there was a public meeting in Church House addressed by Professor Plimer in which he succinctly set out the fundamental scientific flaws of alleged CO2 driven global warming. It was this that set Jeremy on a path of enquiry and research. Jeremy has since spoken at numerous meetings as to the want of any tenable scientific basis for the vast proposed expenditure on the folly of de-carbonisation. He published his first booklet on climate alarmism with the Bruges Group in 2010, "A Lesson in Democracy", and has been a lead speaker at public meetings and debates on the subject.

The Treaty of the European Union, Maastricht Treaty, 7th February, 1992

As people find themselves queueing up at border controls in EU member states, as their passports are stamped, there have been questions about why these things are happening. It's all because of Brexit, and more specifically, the end of free movement between the UK and EU which means that British citizens are no longer EU citizens. But what do you know about EU citizenship is and isn't? In this episode we're joined by Nando Sigona, Professor in International Migration and Forced Displacement at the University of Birmingham, to talk Brexit, EU citizenship and what this makes visible about British citizenship. Michaela's explainer offers a whirlwind tour of EU citizenship from the Maastricht Treaty to Brexit, highlighting its emergence in the context of ambitions for European integration and considering what the loss of EU citizenship means for British citizens and their families. George experiences déjà vu as he uncovers how some politicians and parliamentarians in the UK responded to the idea of EU citizenship when it was mooted in 1992. And Nando helps us unpack what we can learn about citizenship from looking at Brexit as a political transition, its impacts on the lives of EU citizens living in the UK but also considering this in the context of racialised bordering practices, past and present, in the UK and EU. You can access the full transcripts for each episode over on the Rebordering Britain and Britons after Brexit website. In this episode we cover … The Maastricht Treaty, EU citizenship Freedom of Movement Brexit and EU citizens Quote In a sense Brexit was a laboratory for seeing the redefinition and rewriting of citizenship in action but was not new in itself, actually there is almost an institutional memory of how to do these kind of things in the case of Britain. — Nando Sigona Find out more about … Nando and his work here, follow him on Twitter, read his book Within and beyond citizenship EU families and Eurochildren research Institute for Research into Refugees, International Migration and Superdiversity Rebordering Britain and Britons after Brexit research This episode's primary source for Back to the Archive Michaela's work Brexit and British citizens in the EU including her paper with Chantelle Lewis Call to action Follow the podcast on major podcasting platforms or through our RSS Feed. Follow us on Twitter, Instagram or Facebook.

Featuring Anton Jäger and Dominik Leusder on Europe and the European Union from the crises of social democratic welfare states in the 1970s and 80s, the Maastricht Treaty of 1992, through the eurozone crisis, to the present moment of war in Ukraine, renewed NATO expansion, and a resurgent far right.Listen to Anton and Dominik's Eurotrash podcast patreon.com/eurotrashSupport this podcast at Patreon.com/TheDig to get our weekly newsletter by emailCheck out those newsletters and our vast archives at thedigradio.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Featuring Anton Jäger and Dominik Leusder on Europe and the European Union from the crises of social democratic welfare states in the 1970s and 80s, the Maastricht Treaty of 1992, through the eurozone crisis, to the present moment of war in Ukraine, renewed NATO expansion, and a resurgent far right. Listen to Anton and Dominik's Eurotrash podcast patreon.com/eurotrash Support this podcast at Patreon.com/TheDig to get our weekly newsletter by email Check out those newsletters and our vast archives at thedigradio.com

The Winston Smith Literary Review Presents CLIMATE: ALL IS WELL, ALL WILL BE WELL An Evening with Jeremy Nieboer (Bruges Group) A talk by Jeremy followed by questions from the audience. Wallingford Town Hall Nr Oxford, England 7pm Wednesday 22nd June 2022 Streaming LIVE exclusively by Hearts of Oak Jeremy Nieboer was educated at Harrow School and Oriel College Oxford. After a period practising as a member of the Bar in Kings Bench Walk he was later admitted as a solicitor becoming a partner in two City law firms. He specialised in corporate work, including mergers and acquisitions, capital market public offerings, private equity transactions and commercial law. He still acts for a few long-standing clients. His first encounter with any challenge to the accepted doctrine of 'global warming' came through his contact with Christopher Booker, whom Jeremy first met when acting as lead solicitor on the application by Lord Rees-Mogg to restrain ratification of the Maastricht Treaty. Christopher himself published his essential work "The Real Global Warming Disaster" in 2009. Just at the time of its publication, there was a public meeting in Church House addressed by Professor Plimer in which he succinctly set out the fundamental scientific flaws of alleged CO2 driven global warming. It was this that set Jeremy on a path of enquiry and research. Jeremy has since spoken at numerous meetings as to the want of any tenable scientific basis for the vast proposed expenditure on the folly of de-carbonisation. He published his first booklet on climate alarmism with the Bruges Group in 2010, "A Lesson in Democracy", and has been a lead speaker at public meetings and debates on the subject. Jeremy's latest book ‘Climate, all is well, all will be well' available on Amazon https://www.amazon.co.uk/Climate-all-well-will/dp/1838065857/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr= Follow Winston Smith Literary Review on GETTR and Facebook https://gettr.com/user/winstonsmithlr https://www.facebook.com/WinstonSmithLiteraryReview/?ti=as Recorded live 22.6.22 *Special thanks to Bosch Fawstin for recording our intro/outro on this podcast. Check out his art https://theboschfawstinstore.blogspot.com/ and follow him on GETTR https://gettr.com/user/BoschFawstin To sign up for our weekly email, find our social media, podcasts, video, livestream platforms and more go to https://heartsofoak.org/find-us/ Please like, subscribe and share!

The discussion on Climate Change has become a dogma that is cult like. Everyone must accept man made climate change as fact and any questioning of that is mocked and ridiculed, the term "Climate Change Denier" is used to silence all dissent. Jeremy Nieboer is someone who for the last decade has sought to understand climate change and analyse the "facts" behind it. The truth is that the story we are given is not based on any data or fact but on fear and propaganda. Jeremy's latest book 'Climate, All Is Well, All Will Be Well' which is a must read for anyone who wants to know the truth about the Climate Change ballyhoo. Jeremy Nieboer was educated at Harrow School and Oriel College Oxford. After a period practising as a member of the Bar in Kings Bench Walk he was later admitted as a solicitor becoming a partner in two City law firms. He specialised in corporate work, including mergers and acquisitions, capital market public offerings, private equity transactions and commercial law. He still acts for a few long-standing clients. His first encounter with any challenge to the accepted doctrine of 'global warming' came through his contact with Christopher Booker, whom Jeremy first met when acting as lead solicitor on the application by Lord Rees-Mogg to restrain ratification of the Maastricht Treaty. Christopher himself published his essential work "The Real Global Warming Disaster" in 2009. Just at the time of its publication, there was a public meeting in Church House addressed by Professor Plimer in which he succinctly set out the fundamental scientific flaws of alleged CO2 driven global warming. It was this that set Jeremy on a path of enquiry and research. Jeremy has since spoken at numerous meetings as to the want of any tenable scientific basis for the vast proposed expenditure on the folly of de-carbonisation. He published his first booklet on climate alarmism with the Bruges Group in 2010, "A Lesson in Democracy", and has been a lead speaker at public meetings and debates on the subject. Jeremy's latest book ‘Climate, All is Well, All Will be Well' available on Amazon https://www.amazon.co.uk/Climate-all-well-will/dp/1838065857/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr= And he will be giving a talk on his book at ‘The Winston Smith Literary Review' event at Wallingford Town Hall, near Oxford on Wednesday 22nd June at 7pm, free entry and all are welcome! Hearts of Oak will be livestreaming the event on GETTR social media https://gettr.com/user/heartsofoak Interview recorded 20.6.22 *Special thanks to Bosch Fawstin for recording our intro/outro on this podcast. Check out his art https://theboschfawstinstore.blogspot.com/ and follow him on GETTR https://gettr.com/user/BoschFawstin To sign up for our weekly email, find our social media, podcasts, video, livestream platforms and more go to https://heartsofoak.org/find-us/ Please like, subscribe and share!

The eurozone, officially known as the euro area, is a geographic and economic region that consists of all the European Union countries that have fully incorporated the euro as their national currency. As of 2022, the eurozone consists of 19 countries in the European Union (EU): Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia, and Spain.1 Approximately 340 million people live in the eurozone area. In 1992, the Maastricht Treaty created the EU and paved the way for the formation of a common economic and monetary union consisting of a central banking system, a common currency, and a common economic region, the eurozone. Not all European Union nations participate in the eurozone; some opt to use their own currency and maintain their financial independence. European Union nations that decide to participate in the eurozone must meet requirements regarding price stability, sound public finances, the durability of convergence, and exchange rate stability. The eurozone is one of the largest economic regions in the world and its currency, the euro, is considered one of the most liquid when compared to others. It is often used as an example when studying trilemmas, an economic theory that postulates that nations have three options when making decisions regarding their international monetary policies.

In this episode of Life Matters, Commissioner Johnston takes the opportunity to examine California's unique situation in the cultural battle now raging across the nation and the world. Few Californians fully realize that our form of government has been dramatically changed through extreme alteration of our method of voting and tallying votes.  But this is only one aspect of the very serious attack on our state's form of government and our nation's form of government. Justice Clarence Thomas explains the deeper significance of the Supreme Court leak in the midst of its deliberations. Justice Thomas is unequivocal; the very nature of America's legal system and form of government has been attacked, with the purpose of undermining and altering America. Brian further explains how California's open, ‘top two,' or “jungle primary” has given, not the individual voter, but those who control political groups the authority to determine election outcomes. This is not new in history nor even in American history. Brian explains the history of New York's Tammany Hall which for nearly 100 years had absolute and openly corrupt political power over the state and specifically the city of New York.  It was only the determined leader ship of Fiorello La Guardia and his allies who were able to both expose and ultimately undo the worst parts of the Tammany Hall political machine. Vestiges of it still remain in the state of New York and in many aspects of the Democrat, machine politics system.  Brian also explains how the American form of government, centered on the value of each and every life and the significance of the individual person, is in direct contrast to centralized authoritarian forms of government.  These governments often promise goodies and benefits to political groups, but in fact use these promises to maintain authoritarian control, even to the disregard of individual lives. From personal experience, Brian explains the nature of the European Union, the Maastricht Treaty which in many cases tricked individual European countries to surrender their sovereignty, and how it is a false and empty emulation of the principles of the United States of America. Further, Brian explains how failure to understand the civics of your community, and the methods of election, will result in failure for well-meaning, pro-life individuals who only vote based on their feelings and not on understanding. “Six Ways To Defeat a ProLife Candidate” outlines how many pro-abortion candidates gain office even though there are many pro-life voters in their district. Pro-life individuals must make an effort to understand the civic process if they wish to be successful in changing their laws whether locally, regionally, or on the state level and national level.  Knowledgeable voting is essential for good government, particularly when voting to protect life.  

Here we are in 2022 navigating cancel culture, Brexit, identity politics, war in Europe. How did we get here? Did we miss something? Robert Carlyle, who played the wildcard Begbie in the '90s hit Trainspotting, is here to show us that we did. That the world we live in was shaped by the forgotten decade: the 1990s. Episode 6: The Maastricht Treaty In this programme Robert returns to the controversial Maastricht Treaty of 1992 which transformed Europe into a political union rather than just an economic one. This unleashed a civil war in the Conservative Party which has echoed down the ages and arguably resulted in Brexit. David Davies MP was in the thick of that battle as Chief Whip to Prime Minister John Major. He takes us back to pivotal moments of that drama when the future of the country hung in the balance and the consequences of which we're living with today. Historical Consultant Anand Menon Music and Sound Design Phil Channell Producer Neil McCarthy"

Jack Blanchard speaks to some of the key U.K. players involved in the passage of the Maastricht Treaty and ponders whether this was the moment which set Britain on the path to Brexit.Former British diplomat John Kerr recalls the epic all-night negotiations in Holland, including a session where he hid under a table to offer secret advice to Prime Minister John Major. Treasury Minister Francis Maude tells how he was dispatched to sign the treaty by his then-boss, Chancellor Norman Lamont, who seemingly did not want his own name enshrined upon the document.Rebel MPs Iain Duncan Smith and Bill Cash recall the heated debates in parliament which then followed, with Tory Euroskeptics working hand in glove with opposition Labour MPs led by shadow Europe minister George Robertson, who also appears on the podcast.Former Tory whip Andrew Mitchell recalls the Major government's valiant but ultimately abortive attempts to push the rebel MPs back into line. And Cambridge University's Professor Catherine Barnard explains the wider significance of the Maastricht Treaty and its impact upon Britain, 30 years on. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

On 7 February 1992, twelve states signed the Maastricht Treaty, the foundation treaty of the European Union. As the treaty enters its 30s, what has it achieved? And where do we go from here? Bruegel's Maria Demertzis talks to Amy Verdun, Professor at the University of Victoria and visiting Professor at Leiden University, and Mathieu Segers, Professor in Contemporary European History at Maastricht University and Europe Chair at Studio Europa Maastricht, starting with their own personal recollection of 1992. This episode is recorded in collaboration with Studio Europa Maastricht. Studio Europa Maastricht is a centre of expertise for Europe-related debate and research founded in 2018 and supported by the partners of the Maastricht, Working on Europe programme: Maastricht University, the Province of Limburg and the City of Maastricht. Together we aim to position Maastricht, the capital of Limburg, as a meeting place for citizen dialogue and debate and establish a centre of excellence for research on Europe and European integration. Conversation on 30 years EMU will continue on 26 & 27 September – more information can be found here: https://studioeuropamaastricht.nl/debate-dialogue/regeneration-maastricht/

Find out more on our website: https://bit.ly/3sFTnrH The future of the financial services industry – centred in the City of London – matters enormously to the health of the United Kingdom's economy. The Trade and Co-operation Agreement (TCA) has few provisions on financial services and the UK now appears set to drive a wedge between EU and British rules so it can “benefit” from its new-found Brexit freedom. In reality, this “wedge” is unlikely to benefit the economic prospects of the City or the United Kingdom. There can be no doubt that the EU will use the “autonomy of its decision-making process” – as stressed in the TCA. If the UK wishes to row alongside the EU super-tanker and “take” its rules, then the UK will remain “equivalent”. But current UK policy intentions suggest there will be an ever-widening gulf by the end of this Commission's term in 2024 – as the logical outcome of UK policy. The internationally mobile financial services industry will undoubtedly take account of this probability in planning the location of future business opportunities. How might this play out by say 2024? Could the divergence cause the end of the City's dominance of European finance? It might well do. Speaker: Graham Bishop is renowned for his vision and the courage to propose radical ideas, yet ground them in a mastery of the technical details of the financial system... to the extent that he has even been referred to as a one-man think tank. He was elected as Chairman of the National Council of the UK branch of the European Movement in 2020, after many years on the National Council, Executive and Vice-Chairman. Due to his influence at the meeting point of politics, economics and finance, President Barroso appointed him in 2013 to be a member of the European Commission's Expert Group looking into initiatives for the joint issuance of debt in the form of a redemption fund and eurobills (Commission press release; Graham's press release). For the past five years, Graham has been developing a proposal for a ‘Temporary Eurobill Fund'. He has already presented the idea to both the European Commission and European Parliament, as well as around the EU. As a result, the concept has evolved substantially. Such a development would change the euro area government debt market dramatically and mark another step towards "Completing the Economic and Monetary Union." Graham Bishop's Plan for a Temporary Eurobill: 30 FAQs A dedicated Europhile, Graham offers his experience and insights on a pro bono basis in key fields to EU policy-makers. His influence with them has built up since the early 1990s, when he pointed out to the Maastricht Treaty negotiators that government debt would have a fundamentally different quality in a common currency. He went on to play a key role in designing the changeover to the euro of national currencies, and of Europe's capital markets.

In an increasingly multipolar world, the debate over the strategic autonomy of the EU has been given fresh impetus. In his address to the IIEA, Mr. Cloos discusses the past, present and future of the concept of strategic autonomy and what it means for the EU. Mr. Cloos also examines how strategic autonomy can be pursued and what it would entail for the EU. He argues that it is vital for the EU to better understand it potential strengths in this regard, as well as its perceived weaknesses. About the Speakers: Jim Cloos was appointed Secretary-General of TEPSA in 2021, following an influential career in the European institutions, serving as Deputy Director General for General and Institutional Affairs at the General Secretariat of the Council of the EU. He previously served as Director for Transatlantic Relations, Human Rights and Counter Terrorism with the Council of the EU, as well as Head of Cabinet for the President of the European Commission, and of the EU Commissioner for Agriculture. He joined the Luxembourgish Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1981, serving in Bonn and Brussels, including as Luxembourg's Deputy Permanent Representative to the EU, and played an active role in drafting the Maastricht Treaty.

Tune in for an amazing intellectual journey with Enrique Baron Crespo, President of the FEPS Scientific Council and Ania Skrzypek, FEPS Director for Research and Training! We are travelling back in time look at the legacy of 5 Treaties, an EU Charter, 2 Conventions and countless negotiations – and see, what defining elements are already are on the debating table ahead of the Conference on the Future of Europe.

Skip the Queue is brought to you by Rubber Cheese, a digital agency that builds remarkable systems and websites for attractions that helps them increase their visitor numbers. Your host is  Kelly Molson, MD of Rubber Cheese.Download our free ebook The Ultimate Guide to Doubling Your Visitor NumbersIf you like what you hear, you can subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, and all the usual channels by searching Skip the Queue or visit our website rubbercheese.com/podcastIf you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave us a five star review, it really helps others find us. And remember to follow us on Twitter for your chance to win the books that have been mentioned in this episode.Competition ends March 31st 2021. The winner will be contacted via Twitter. Show references:Alex Robertson leads global advocacy for the Scotch whisky portfolio and a team of 60 international and graduate ambassadors.www.linkedin.com/in/alexrrobertsonScotch Watch on YouTubeScotch Watch uncovering whisky one story and one dram at a time.To register for future Scotch Watch live shows,  follow Alex on Instagram at @dramgoodlifewww.chivasbrothers.comwww.chivasgraduates.comNow accepting applications for roles starting in Summer 2021.  Transcription:Kelly Molson: Welcome to Skip the Queue, a podcast for people working in or working with visitor attractions. I'm your host, Kelly Molson. Each episode, I speak with industry experts from the attractions world. In today's episode, I speak with Alex Robertson, Head of Heritage and Education and International Graduate Programme and Archives at Chivas Brothers. Alex leads global advocacy for the Scotch whisky portfolio and a team of 60 international and graduate ambassadors. We discuss the superb program of digital audience engagement that Chivas Brothers developed during lockdown, and how that's gained them a global audience with viewers from over 30 different countries every episode.  If you like what you hear, you can subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, and all the YouTube channels by searching Skip the Queue. Kelly Molson: Alex, thank you so much for joining us on the podcast today. I'm super excited that you've come on because we actually know each other. But that does not mean that Alex gets away without doing the icebreaker questions. So my first icebreaker question. What is top of your bucket list? Alex Robertson: That's an outstanding question because part of the reason that I took this job is because I had such a passion for travel. And since taking it more than a decade ago, I've visited more than 60 countries around the world. 60 countries. I guess it's something that would really challenge me. I guess it's something that I feel that would conquer a fear. And I have an astonishing fear of heights because as a child I was repeatedly rescued from the school roof, from the local university crossed the roof of my house. Alex Robertson: So I think it would need to be something that challenged that like skydiving or climbing Mount Everest, something really off the scale because I've certainly got a job that allows me to address those bucket list challenges of visiting places you would never go for your two-week break in the summer. Kelly Molson: You chose a really good profession for travel to combine your passions. Alex Robertson: Yes, it was part of the motivation, Kelly. I love travel. And a journalist had the opportunity to travel, albeit under very different circumstances, whether that was to Sri Lanka after the tsunami or whether it was to Italy to cover the G8 summit. And part of the motivation, in addition to a real passion for Scotch, was to see the world and to travel to wonderful places, from Serbia to India to Kazakhstan and Ukraine. And do you know? The one lesson I take away is that you can see these wonderful places but what makes a country is its people. And that's what you remember most of all. Wonderful. Kelly Molson: Yeah. I completely agree with you. It's all about when you travel, it's about immersing yourself into the culture and the people that are there, not just the place that you're at. I just want to go back to your fear, because... So you have a fear of heights. What on Earth were you doing on your school roof if you have a fear of heights? Alex Robertson: I loved climbing. I absolutely loved climbing. So I specifically remember, as a child, one of my earliest memories, was climbing up the drainpipe of my school roof, an old-style school just outside Glasgow, and then getting to the top and thinking, what am I going to do now? And that happened repeatedly. So that's what's informed the fear of heights today. So for example, I can't even go up the Arc de Triomphe. At all. So I need to stay below while my family enjoys the views from above. Kelly Molson: Okay. Now I know, Alex, that you're a really big music fan. You might not have ever thought about the answer to this question, though. So if you were a WWF wrestler, what would be your entrance song? Alex Robertson: Oh, that's superb, I love it. I love a deadline. I oversee deadlines the same day. And I remember a colleague of mine saying, "We need to have Europe played through the tannoy when a deadline's coming, Final Countdown, to pump everyone up." Or I think it would need to be Eye of the Tiger, you know? Kelly Molson: Yeah. Yeah. Alex Robertson: Do you remember that? That was in Rocky, I think. Kelly Molson: Yeah. Brilliant. Alex Robertson: Something old school that really gets us going. Kelly Molson: I like that. Eye of the Tiger was my running song. And it was always my five-mile song. Because if I could get past five miles, I knew that I was going to get back home, which was the eight-mile loop that I was doing. So that's a good song. Alex Robertson: That's a great... Do you know my running song is Gorillaz, which is Melancholy Hill. Kelly Molson: Oh, nice. Alex Robertson: It just really keeps you driving, and it gives you a little bit of push when you need it. Kelly Molson: I like it. That's a good song, as well. This is my last icebreaker question before I do the unpopular opinion, which I love. So what is your weakest claim to fame? Alex Robertson: Oh, goodness. Well, you know what? I'm a huge fan of Six Music, BBC Six Music. And Shaun Keaveny has a great slot in that which is called the Small Claims Court. And I was actually on that. And I've called in before. So my small claim was that at some point, it would have probably been the late 90s, and I was interviewing on Rudolph Giuliani's broken window theory in Glasgow. You know, that if you tackle vandalism and that type of thing, then that prevents more serious crimes. And I was walking through Glasgow and a limousine pulled up, and Cher was inside it. And they sort of spoke to me and said hello. And my claim to fame is that actually, Cher was trying to pick me up at that point. Alex Robertson: And I'm not sure if that's a direct link. Another minor one is that I once shared a jacuzzi with Brian Gecksa at a family holiday park in the north of England. Kelly Molson: Wow. That's so impressive. The Cher one has blown my mind. Wow. Alex Robertson: Yeah. Yeah. I remember saying to Shaun Keaveny, and it wasn't my joke, actually, it was his producer's, but I said, "If you could turn back time, what would you do?" I think I ran away. I was terrified. Kelly Molson: That's a terrible, terrible dad joke. Alex Robertson: It is. It is. Kelly Molson: Awful, that joke. Okay. Thank you for sharing, that was awesome. Tell me your unpopular opinion. So something that you believe to be true that hardly anyone agrees with you on. Alex Robertson: Actually, one that my wife permanently disagrees with me on is I believe if you add vinegar to chips it reduces the fat because you're adding acid, therefore if makes them healthy. Kelly Molson: Hmm. Alex Robertson: But no one's bought into it. No one. Kelly Molson: I'm not sure about that one, but I'm going to try it the next time I want chips. My partner is on a super, super health kick at the moment. So chips, they're not in our house. Maybe I could convince him with the vinegar trick. Alex Robertson: I think that science proves it. I think it's that acid breaks down fat. I'm sure of it. Kelly Molson: Absolutely. Alex Robertson: I'm absolutely sure of it. In fact, I should have Googled it beforehand to at least support my argument. Same as I should have Googled was Cher actually in Glasgow in the late 90s, or was I just imagining it? You can't tell. We'll never know. Kelly Molson: It's a mystery, and it should stay a mystery, I think, Alex. Alex Robertson: Yeah. Kelly Molson: Amazing, thank you. So Alex and I, just as a caveat, we do know each other. We have worked on a number of projects together for Chivas. But I had a little look back over your career and, oh my gosh, it's really impressive. And I actually didn't know this about you. That Alex has been a crime reporter, a BBC journalist, an international brand ambassador, and now he's Head of Heritage and Education and the International Grads Programme and Archives at Chivas Brothers. Kelly Molson: Honestly, Alex, if at some point someone says to me, "You know that Alex Roberts? He's only an international spy," I would believe it. Alex Robertson: I'm going to tell you something really interesting. So I studied European politics. I went to university to study English and become an English teacher. That was my plan. And I studied European politics because it was a huge passion of mine. I think it was the time of the Maastricht Treaty in the early 90s, a really important time for European politics. And I can't believe 30 years later how much that's changed. 30 years, Kelly, can you believe it? That sounds bizarre to speak in those terms. And I believe in following our passions. And I do follow my passions from journalism to Scotch whisky. I was a journalist for ten years. Alex Robertson: But I have an uncle who is absolutely convinced that I work in the international stage for a government agency of one type or another. Absolutely convinced. Kelly Molson: I can see that. I can see why, though. You're like a man of travel, slightly mysterious, with a journalistic background. I can see that. Alex Robertson: Well, he mentions it every time we see him. He's deadly serious. He sort of just nods a wink and says, "I know what you're up to.", you know? Kelly Molson: Oh, I love it. Well, tell him that I agree with him now. He'll probably go [inaudible 00:08:43] at you next time. Alex Robertson: Yep. Kelly Molson: I want to know, this transition from crime reporter, journalist to brand ambassador, what was it that made you make that switch? Because it's incredibly different.Alex Robertson: Yeah. There were a couple of reasons, and also, they're very alike in many ways. I'd spent nearly a decade as a journalist, and much of that on radio. I absolutely adore radio and congratulations on the podcast, this is just superb. I love the spoken word, without sounding ridiculous. And I'd worked freelance for a long time with The Big Issue. Which you know, and was lucky enough there to win The Amnesty International Prize for Human Rights Reporting. I was passionate about asylum seekers and refugees relocating in Glasgow. Alex Robertson: I worked for the Scotland Sunday and Sport because I loved football, without sounding like an absolute cliché. And I used to work the crime beat in Glasgow, too and then moved to the BBC which, to use a football analogy, if you're a journalist, it's the only team that you ever want to play for. And I spent a couple of very happy years at the BBC working on website reporting, working on the radio bulletins and, occasionally, on television. And do you know what? Journalism was changing. I could see the writing on the wall for journalism. Alex Robertson: The opportunity to travel, which I'd done previously, I earlier mentioned going to Sri Lanka to cover the tsunami. I mentioned going to Genoa to cover the G8 summit. The real passion for travel and getting out and really identifying stories on the ground and working on stories, that opportunity was diminishing. And many more stories were being written from press copy or agency copy at your desk. And I could really see the writing on the wall for the future of journalism. I'm delighted to see that, actually, there still are tons of them. Many fine journalists out there today in Glasgow, in the UK, and internationally, especially at these crucial times of whether it's Brexit, COVID, or the US elections. Alex Robertson: And there are people doing a great job. And I wanted something else. I felt I'd taken that as far as I could. I had a huge passion for Scotch, I had a huge passion for travel, and the international brand ambassador role just seemed absolutely perfect. And I joined that 2008, I think. And I think my first trip was to China. Never been to Shanghai before. And traveled throughout China, and then moved to India and never looked back. As I say, that's more than 60 countries since. Alex Robertson: I also had a very small whisky club in Glasgow that... It's a feminist theory that when men get together they form clubs. And that's certainly what happened. But it was a very diverse club. And I remember walking into the Pot Still bar in Glasgow, I don't know if you've been there, Kelly...Kelly Molson: No. Alex Robertson: But it's an amazing bar. You walk in, there's about 500 whiskies on the wall. And I thought, how do I begin to understand that? But given the similarities, it's still about presentation, it's just still about structure, it's about engaging people, it's about inspiring people, all of which you also did as a journalist. Kelly Molson: Yeah. Absolutely. And actually, it's the engaging of people that I want to talk a little bit more about. But there's something that I kind of need to talk about, the visitor centres that you've been part of, initially. Because obviously this podcast is for people that work in the visitor attraction world, or work with the visitor attraction world. But I think from some of the things that Chivas have been bringing out during the pandemic, there's some really key learnings that we can take from that that translate across.Kelly Molson: But I want to talk a little bit about the Malt Whisky Distilleries. So Aberlour, Scapa, Strathisla, and The Glenlivet. They have been closed at certain points during the pandemic because, of course, they haven't been able to have visitors into the centres. How were you able to adapt the centres during the COVID pandemic? What happened there? Alex Robertson: You know, I see visitor centres as the beating heart of communities, you know? And Scotch whisky is not only a passion for what I do, it's a pride in what we do, because we've got 10,000 jobs directly employed by the Scotch whisky industry here, and 40,000 indirectly. There's an incredible impact on communities. And, as all your listeners will know, the visitor centre is where your story comes alive. Sometimes I used to say, "If you enter The Glenlivet, just being there was enough.", you know? The sounds, the sights, the smells. It made the hairs on your neck stand up. It's an amazing experience. Alex Robertson: And then comes along COVID, and all of that closes. And this is where you experience our Scotch whiskies. This is where you understand their heritage, their craftsmanship, their flavour. And now the priority, of course, was making sure the stills continued to run. That was number one. And Chivas Brothers implemented an industry-leading safe system of work to ensure that that could continue to happen in the most extreme circumstances, at the height of this pandemic. And also came to the aid of communities. It produced, I think, 160,000 litres of hand sanitiser and made 300 contact-free deliveries. Becoming social care providers to charities. Alex Robertson: In May, Chivas Brothers became the NHS Scotland's first pro bono hand sanitiser supplier. So a great effort. It was all about protecting our communities and ensuring the stills continued to run. So that was number one. And then you're absolutely right. As Head of Heritage and Education, I had to look at this and say, okay, we bring in tens of thousands of people a year. My specific role is to bring in our trade guests from all over the world and take them to a beautiful house, which you've been to, and...Kelly Molson: Yes, it is very beautiful. Alex Robertson: Show them around the distilleries. And I think it demonstrated that there was an opportunity. Suddenly we realised there was an opportunity to reach people through digital advocacy. And very quickly, I turned around a digital plan which would centre on Scotch whisky education in the Scotch Whisky Academy. This would address a thirst for knowledge, but within our business, because that was important. We also want employees to be engaged during this, Kelly, it wasn't just about the visitors. And then engage a global audience. Alex Robertson: And I would say the key learning is that we've actually extended our reach beyond those numbers that we would normally engage. We've got a much greater footprint, albeit digitally. And looking to the future, I would say that we will always place physical activations hand in hand with digital activations. And they will always go together from here on in once we can open again. And, of course, the distilleries are, the brand homes are open. I can tell you more about that. Kelly Molson: Yeah. I think you're absolutely right. And that's something that I have been thinking more and more of over the past few months, about at some point we will go back to normal. A version of normality. But all of these incredible things that have happened means that our reach for visitors and our reach for people that we can educate and get our brand in front of, has just expanded. And I don't want people to kind of go back to the old ways. I think like you say, it has to work really hand in hand. One of the things I really want to talk about it, Scotch Watch. Kelly Molson: So this is one of the things that has come out of the pandemic, in terms of your digital plan. And I think it's wonderful. I want you to explain what Scotch Watch is for us. And how did you come up with the idea? How did this happen?Alex Robertson: I think Scotch Watch was important because there were a couple of drivers, I think. And it's amazing how we were able to learn from others, too, and see how others were prepared for digital in terms of offering virtual tours and so on. Scotch Watch had a couple objectives. The first was actually to meet the makers, the people behind our Scotch whiskies, in a very informal setting. And second, on digital, we know that seven percent of a presentation is what we say. The other 93 percent is our body language, it's how we interact, it's our tone, it's how we look, it's how we shape our conversation. But all of that vanishes on digital. Kelly Molson: Yeah.Alex Robertson: So I wanted to create something that was much more informal in nature, that took us away from the traditional pillars of heritage, craftsmanship, and flavor, and actually brought through the personalities of those involved. That gave an opportunity to meet the people who have decades of experience and real passion for Scotch whisky, and also showcase some great new whiskies and demonstrate that the work of Scotch whisky, the work of Chivas Brothers, The Glenlivet, Chivas Regal, Aberlour is very much still going on. Alex Robertson: Now, the idea wasn't mine. Although I'm perfectly happy to claim it. And the idea was our master blender, our director of blending, Sandy Hyslop, my co-host on the show. So he approached me and said, "Listen, what can we do here? We're doing the Academy, we know that we know we're supporting, mentoring globally. We've reached 3,000 people in three months. Incredible reach. What else can we do?" He said, "I want it on a show, on Zoom, weekly, or on other platforms, where we just informally have a chat." Alex Robertson: Sandy's a huge antiques collector, he's a watch collector. He wanted to talk about watches, he wanted to talk about... I'm a huge music fan, I wanted to get music in there. And then we would have a studio guest and we would just talk about whisky. And we had a great session recently where we went live to an ambassador of Poland, Anna. We had our brand manager Hannah in the Ballantine's team in London. And just the dynamic shows a real passion behind Scotch. We moved to a monthly show, and do you know what? We've already reached more than 30 countries. Kelly Molson: Wow. Alex Robertson: In that time. And more than 500 people. And this is just the start for Scotch Watch. I want to... We've now got it on YouTube, we'll have events every Thursday, they can just find out more on Instagram, my handle is at DramGoodLife. But I want to take it further and have Instagram lives. But really, it's an informal look at Scotch whisky, Kelly, so that's a very long-winded answer for you. Kelly Molson: I loved it. So I watched the last episode, I watched the October edition. And I think it's where you unveiled the new Ballantine's 7 Bourbon Finish. Now, I'm very appreciative of whisky, but I wouldn't call myself a whisky connoisseur. I've got a gin bar in my house, not a whisky bar. Sorry. But what I found really engaging, and it goes back to what you were saying earlier about being a storyteller and having that kind of connection with brands. I loved how each person on the webinar spoke really passionately about not only the whisky but something that was personal to them that was connected to the whisky. Kelly Molson: So, for instance, you mentioned Sandy being a big vintage collector. Now he took the whisky, and he associated the whisky with an item. He had a stopwatch. A beautiful, beautiful vintage pocket watch, sorry, a pocket watch. And he talked about it in terms of how that connected with the whisky itself, and then you spoke about a song, a record, that you connected with the whisky. And I loved that. Even for someone that's not a huge, huge lover of whisky, I really related to those things, because actually, I'm a big music fan, and actually, I really love vintage pieces. Kelly Molson: And then your, I think it was Hannah, the brand ambassador, brand manager, sorry. She spoke about a book that connected with it as well. And I thought, "I love all of these things." And it really made me feel a connection to the brand that I probably wouldn't have got previously if I'd have just seen it on a shelf or if you'd talked about it in some way. It felt very, very personal. Alex Robertson: I think that's a great observation, thank you. Because, again, it's how do you establish an emotional connection online? That's the challenge we're all facing. How do we bring to life these great distilleries and these great whiskies when, actually, we're on the celebrity squares of Zoom? And people are at home. And you've got to make that emotional connection because we all have it. And the second point is that, actually, whisky is accessible, you know? The most significant change I've seen in the past decade is the emergence and the rise of whisky cocktails. Superb. I love it. Alex Robertson: And I believe if you're going to make whisky accessible, then you can pair it with music. Because you can follow the rhythm of music in the high flavour notes and the low flavor notes of whisky. You can pair it with your favourite pocket watch, you can pair it with dinner. It's so accessible. And if we're doing that, if we're making whisky accessible, and someone sitting at home's saying... Actually, it was interesting, we had Jenna Mariwan who was a The Glenlivet ambassador on the previous episode, The Glenlivet is number one in the US. And I said, "Listen, what is it that makes The Glenlivet unique? What is it makes people in the US passionate about it?" And she said, "Because it's for people like me." Alex Robertson: And that's what I want the emotional connection to be when they watch, just as you said, Kelly. If you watch Scotch Watch and you go, "You know what? This is for me. I don't feel excluded from this, I feel part of this."Kelly Molson: Yeah. That's exactly the feeling that I got from it. When I started watching it I thought, "Is this for me? Yes, I appreciate whisky, yes I work in a whisky world, but is this really for me?" And within ten minutes I thought, "This is absolutely for me." It really got me right here. And I really enjoyed that, at the end, it was Anna who took us through making an old fashioned. I was like, "Great, I could do this." And, again, it felt really easy, it felt really accessible. And that, for me, is the biggest part of building that audience engagement, is that you're making it for that person. Kelly Molson: I felt like you and Sandy were talking directly to me that evening. And there was a lot of people on that call. You were getting a lot of questions. But it really felt like you were connecting with me individually, and that is what's so important about the engagement level. It's really...Alex Robertson: Yeah, that's wonderful, thank you. And I think that's the challenge, because for all of us, because people are at a laptop all day now, at home, too. And we're calling on them to then join us on the laptops again. There's no change of scenery. And that's a real challenge. How do we work against, shall we say, online fatigue? Is that a risk? Because I guess none of us predicted this still to be running. This started in March, you know? It's now December. Kelly Molson: What was nice, and obviously I didn't have the ingredients to do it, but I thought what would be nice is that actually, I could make that cocktail while you were doing it. So there's maybe that level of interaction is what differentiates it from your day. Where you've spent all day on Zoom calls. Actually, when you're doing something as well, it doesn't then feel like just another Zoom call. You've got that level of interactivity. Which I guess, is that something else that Chivas are now doing? Your virtual tastings, for example. That's something quite new. Alex Robertson: Yeah. We had to try this carefully. So the other brand homes, they did a great job of opening up safely to allow people to come in and taste whisky. And given the current restrictions, that's now been moved outdoors, though Speyside can be lovely in winter. If you come and visit. Kelly Molson: It's beautiful, but a tad chilly. Alex Robertson: So we had to move very, very quickly to an online advocacy strategy. And I built that, essentially, on three pillars. And one beauty was that you could get to meet people that you wouldn't normally get to. Or makers could, instead of having to travel across the globe and spend a week, all I needed of their time was an hour. Which is a complete game-changer. Our distiller's Alan Winchester, our blender's Sandy Hyslop. Alex Robertson: So the first thing we launched was our Scotch Whisky Academy, to address a real thirst for knowledge internationally. And that's been a huge success. It's now running every single week. And you can come on, you can attend three sessions, and you can learn all about Scotch whisky. Heritage, craftsmanship, flavour. What makes it unique. And that has been an enormous success. And that's largely been to an internal audience and customers. Our challenge now in 2021 is how do we take that, in partnership with our visitor centres, to the public? Because we know people want to engage. Alex Robertson: And then the second part is we've had a great amount of activity. We've launched Ballantine's 7 Bourbon Finish, as you said. We've launched The Glenlivet Spectra and Caribbean Cask. We have a new Chivas Regal 13 range, extra. And we've been supporting that internationally. And the team are working incredibly hard every single week, hosting sessions from the US to Canada to South America, all across Europe, as far afield as Australia. And we are doing that every single week to customers and consumers. We're reaching a much broader audience. Alex Robertson: And in addition to that, I have a team of about 50 graduate ambassadors in 27 countries, each and every country at a different stage of this pandemic. And they have responded just quite brilliantly to this. And my recommendation to everyone, bring energy to it. Bring creativity to it. Create dynamic content. And have people who understand the medium. Which is a challenge, because this is a brave new world for us all. Kelly Molson: Yeah. It absolutely is. And just touching on the graduates that you spoke about, for them and the world that they live in, this has not been as challenging for them. They live their lives relatively digitally, so for some people, this has been a huge, huge, huge change, but for them, actually, the assumption is that they've dealt pretty well with this. Alex Robertson: Yes. Yes. Superbly well. I can't praise them highly enough. Of course, they're a digital generation. They don't know a time where they didn't have that access to social and digital. So they're able to drive content. But what they've managed to do is create engaging content and have actually been creative in the process. They've brought energy to this for us. And actually, at a very difficult time for them. The majority are far from home during a pandemic. And often in a lockdown. Then have been creating cocktails online, have a look at Chivas graduates on Instagram, you'll see them. We've been engaging local bartenders, have been supporting their own trade. They have the consumers, they've been doing really creative videos online. Really, really proud of them, an incredible effort. Alex Robertson: But the lesson for us all is how do we bring creativity and energy? And for us, it was also how do we get the glass in hand? How to look definitely at e-commerce, too. Kelly Molson: Yeah, that's right, actually. Chivas has been through... There was a lot of e-commerce stores that have launched through the lockdown, which is actually, it's quite a new thing, isn't it? There's not been a real focus on direct sales through the brands. Alex Robertson: You know, Kelly, it's really interesting, I don't know what you think yourself, but people really had to rethink this. And I don't want to say that I don't know if we were all well-prepared for digital advocacy because you place such value on physical interaction, and rightly so. But I think it had to make us think differently. You know, if someone came to a whisky tasting that I was hosting in Mumbai, we knew the whisky was there on the table. If we were launching an international Scotch Watch from Scotland, how are we going to get that whisky into their hand? Alex Robertson: And that became the challenge, you're right. We had to link it, because, let's be honest, we have to build a benefit to all of this. And the way to do that is through e-commerce. Kelly Molson: Yeah. And I think it's worked beautifully. And, actually, the speed and the turnaround that things have been able to happen and to launch during this time is testament to the people that you've got in your team, as well. Coming to the end of the podcast interview, I've got a couple of extra questions I'd like to ask you. I think, really, it's what's next. You've done an incredible job. Scotch Watch I genuinely think is just such a fantastic thing. And I really, really hope that it continues. But what can you see that's coming next for the brands? Alex Robertson: Yeah. I had almost planned to first of January. And what we need to do is get back to physical activations when it's safe to do so. That's engaging people face to face, inspiring them on our Scotch whiskies. The Glenlivet, Chivas, Aberlour, Ballantine's, and Royal Salute. But I still think that is some way off. Great news that a vaccine appears to be in the pipeline for the spring. So in the meantime, we need to look at how we raise to another level. I've almost seen this, that we established the base with our Scotch Whisky Academy, we created another level with Scotch Watch and the renovation support, looking at the new whiskies we were launching. Alex Robertson: But I think the challenge for 2021 is really how do we continue to impact globally with Scotch whisky aficionados and Scotch whisky novices? And we really engage them, both with our Scotch Academy, linking in our Scotch Whisky Academy to our brand homes. The Glenlivet Academy. There's a great prospect. Kelly Molson: Wow. Yeah. It is. Alex Robertson: What a great prospect. How do we continue to excite, inspire, engage people creatively? And I'm going to be honest, that's a job I'm doing now. It's really a bit... We're almost planning day by day, week by week at the moment. But I'm excited we can respond, we're about to recruit 20 new Scotch whisky ambassadors for 2021, which is amazing news...Kelly Molson: Fabulous.Alex Robertson: It shows you the confidence that Chivas Brothers has in Scotch whisky in the future. Our markets are confident. Our countries, I deal with about 30 countries around the world. They are confident, they have strong rebound plans, and we know that advocacy, ambassadorial work, both physically and digitally, will absolutely be at the heart of it. I'm optimistic about 2021. Kelly Molson: This is a lovely, positive way to end the podcast, Alex. Thank you. I have to say, the grad scheme that Chivas have, it's phenomenal. And I know that every year, you are completely overwhelmed with applicants for it. So we've got a little bit of a scoop there, that that's coming out soon. But you've got a really hard task ahead of you, I'm sure, because this year I'm positive that you'll be completely inundated when those come out. What we'll do is all of the things that we've discussed today and all of the links to everything that we've talked about will be in the show notes. So we'll have links to Scotch Watch, we'll have links to the Ambassadors website. We'll have links to everything that you can go and look at. Kelly Molson: We always end the podcast by asking our guests if they have a book that they would recommend? Something that they love or something that has helped shape their career in some way over the years? Have you got one you can share with us? Alex Robertson: Wow. I read a lot and lost track as I get old. Which I've touched on a few times, the passage of time. As he buys time to answer. I actually, in a professional sense, I listen to podcasts as often as possible. I'm a huge fan of Dr. Rangan Chatterjee, I don't know if you...Kelly Molson: Okay. Alex Robertson: He wrote The Four Pillars of Health. And I listen to that a lot because I really believe it's important to bring balance to our lives in everything that we do, whether that's in diet, sleep, exercise, and digital. In fact, really fascinated by the impact of digital technology on our experiences at the moment, too. I guess the book that's always had a lasting impact on me is East of Eden by John Steinbeck. Kelly Molson: Great. Alex Robertson: Is number one. The sheer scale of it, the sheer drama, the way he paints colour throughout it. The emotion contained in the book. The generations which it spans. It's incredible, and I'd recommend it to everyone. Kelly Molson: Oh, wow. That is a superb book. Now, as ever, we offer your book as a prize to our guests. So if you'd like to win a copy of this book, then if you head over to our Twitter account, it's just Skip the Queue. And if you retweet this episode announcement saying, "I want Alex's book," then you will be in a chance of winning it. Kelly Molson: Alex, it's been an absolute pleasure to have you on today. Thank you so much for your time. Now, it's just after 11 in the morning, but I think the only way to end this podcast, unfortunately with my cup of tea, is to say Slange Var.Alex Robertson: Yes, Slange Var. Thank you, it's been an absolute pleasure. Kelly Molson: Thanks for listening to Skip the Queue. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave us a five-star review. It really helps others find us. And remember to follow us on Twitter for your chance to win the books that have been mentioned. Skip the Queue is brought to you by Rubber Cheese, a digital agency that builds remarkable systems and websites for attractions that helps them increase their visitor numbers. You can find show notes and transcriptions from this episode, and more, over on our website rubbercheese.com/podcast. 

On today's This Is Our Everest, Edward and Ian revisit everyone's favourite trans-European quiz express, Going For Gold. It's increasingly a relic of a forgotten era in UK-EU relations and our heroes try and pick through the finer points of the Maastricht Treaty to figure out why this might be. There's talk of a giant quiz warehouse, Henry Kelly's voting preferences and a suggested way for Dracula to enter the United Kingdom post 2021.There's up-to-the-minute news of exactly where Finland is and Ian points out once and for all where it all went wrong for the spirit of European togetherness in the British public consciousness. If you'd like to remember the way things were, you can watch the programme here.Tomorrow's podcast sees us take in the world of sport with Channel Four's basketball coverage, from 1985. There’s a bunch of different ways in which you can subscribe to the 200% podcast. You can do so through Spotify, which you can find right here, whilst the podcast RSS feed is here and you can subscribe through Itunes here.And finally, a humble request. These podcasts take a lot of effort to write, record and release, and we would be extremely grateful for your financial support, in whatever way you can manage. We have our Redbubble shop, for the sartorially minded amongst you, and subscribe through joining us on Patreon. We even now have a Kofi button on the site, so do feel free to send us whatever you’re able to. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

In this episode Christian talks to Lord Maude, a veteran of Tory politics whose career spanned nearly 40 years from the government of Margaret Thatcher to David Cameron's 2015 majority. Maude, who was a signatory to the Maastricht Treaty in 1992, talks about the current Brexit negotiations and says he is absolutely certain that both sides want to strike a deal. He also reflects on his time in office implementing contentious reforms to the civil service, and he discusses the importance of ongoing efforts to improve the quality and efficiency of the British state. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Retrospecticus has reached the big five-oh, so we celebreate by talking about “Homer Alone”, the episode that sees Marge snap through stress and visit Rancho Relaxo, while Homer tries and fails to look after Maggie. The episode was first broastcast the day before the Maastricht treaty was signed, so we tell the story of how… Read More »

The EU is debating whether funding to protect economies from the ravages of the Corona virus should come from centrally issued Corona Bonds, or from country-specific debt. In short, should Italy and Spain pay the price of their own misfortune and be landed with the bill to pay off for years to come, whilst totally sovereign nations, like the US, simply issue bonds which can be paid for by the central bank and for which the government has no intention of ever repaying. In this edition of Debunking Economics Phil Dobbie asks Prof Steve Keen whether the inflexibility of the Euro at a time like this will mean countries like Italy will no longer want to be part of it. Could this crisis expedite the demise of the Euro, and, perhaps, the EU itself? If so, is that a good thing? This podcast is FREE, but you'll get access to many more, in full, if you become a paying subscriber - either here, or by becoming a supporter of SDteve Keen on Patreon patreon.com/profstevekeen TRANSCRIPT PHIL DOBBIE [00:00:01] If you were Italy right now, or Spain, suffering thousands of deaths from the Corona virus and the EU, that body was there is there to unify Europe, was quibbling about how we should fund that support, wouldn't you be wondering whether EU membership was worth it? In fact, when this is over, and you are possibly riddled with more debt as a consequence from all of this, wouldn't you be thinking what is the point of staying in the EU? And could Italy and Spain and others quickly follow the UK on the back of the way the EU has dealt with the Corona virus? That's today on the Debunking Economics podcast. PHIL DOBBIE [00:00:38] I'm Phil Dobbie and Steve Keen is with me again, of course. The EU is meeting this week to discuss Corona Bonds, which is something Steve talked about weeks ago on this podcast - funding what could be generated through bonds which are bought by the European Central Bank and issued in large volumes to help countries suffering the most, that need the resources basically, to manage their way through this crisis. But some in the ECB, like Germany and the Netherlands, still see the funding coming through loans, just so those southern European countries don't get used to the idea of lots of free money. So they come out of this crisis with more austerity as they try and pay back those loans, just to add to the general sense of misery. Oh, Steve. The joys of the EU. Well, it is a joy for those who who live in the north of the EU anyway, because they don't have to go through all this austerity. STEVE KEEN [00:01:33] Yeah, it's incredible how the ideology can be sustained when reality is slapping it in the face and kicking in the balls. But that's what's going on. Particularly this is this is just particularly Germanic dedication to what's known as ordoliberalism, which is a combination of the sort of extreme libertarian attitude you'll find with a lot of American libertarian Austrian types combined with this Germanic idea that uou've got to enforce it, so that's where the ordo comes from. And they're saying we've got to get right back to austerity as soon as we finish this without thinking, well, if we didn't have austerity maybe we'd have enough beds right now in the hospitals and enough intensive care units to be able to cope, which we don't. PHIL DOBBIE [00:02:16] But Germany is covered, of course. I mean, they've got a it's very sad, but they've got almost 2000 deaths in Germany. But compare that to Italy, where it's over 17000, almost 18000 deaths. So, yeah, I mean, they're in a much better position. STEVE KEEN [00:02:31] Yeah, they've got the capacity to some extent. But having a decent public health system helps. They haven't destroyed that, whereas the Americans didn't have one to begin with. PHIL DOBBIE [00:02:41] And they've got they've got a government surplus (in Germany). So if they need to spend more money, they can dip into it. STEVE KEEN [00:02:47] That has no relevance whatsoever. But yes, I'll let you get away with that one. PHIL DOBBIE [00:02:50] But from from their point of view they're saying, yeah, we've got the government money. We can spend it. STEVE KEEN [00:02:57] Yeah, that's true. That's the reasoning they'll use unfortunately. PHIL DOBBIE [00:02:59] And Italy doesn't have that surplus. So people in the south aren't gonna buy this. When this is all done and dusted once this is all over, people in Greece and in Italy and in Spain and Portugal, they're all going to say, hang on a second, the EU didn't work for us in this occasion. There was no funding coming. We didn't get to make any extra funding. You didn't help out. What? What are we getting for our membership,. STEVE KEEN [00:03:24] Particularly Italy? Yeah. And in Spain, too. I mean, that's the situation with them is absolutely appalling .When the Italians can rely upon the Cubans and the Chinese more than they can upon their own neighbours, the whole idea of European solidarity ain't looking so crash hot. It's not solidarity. They've been locked into a death cult. PHIL DOBBIE [00:03:48] And the euro is the big problem here, isn't it? Because we've got one central bank. The one central bank issues the bonds. They determine if they are going to embark on quantitative easing. If they if they changed the regulations of the EU, which they have loosened, there's nothing to stop the Europeans agreeing that the the central bank will issue a mass of new debt, new bonds, and that will go to funding the crisis in Italy. There's nothing at all to stop that happening. As you say it's just ideology. STEVE KEEN [00:04:23] Yeah. And it's also that it's been set up in such a way that it can't make a decision, unles its a decision to increase austerity. Remember I voted for Britain leaving the EU. At the time I made the arguments in favour of it, not on the point of view of what would benefit Britain, but ultimately, it was an organisation that shouldn't they shouldn't exist given its policies. Somebody said, look, you can't say it's not Democratic. Look at this democratic structure here. The Democrat structure I saw was, first of all, the European Commission, a bunch of economic dominated bureaucrats, tthey draught the laws, not the parliament. The parliament cannot draught laws. The law is sent to the parliament for ratification or objection. And if the parliament votes against the law, it can also be voted for by the 19 finance ministers who meet independently and no records are kept at their meetings. That's why Yanis Varoufakis recent move to release all the recordings he made I think is a brilliant move because it shows us how stupidly and badly they behave. So the whole thing is set up in such a way that, whatever the commission wants to happen will happen. What everybody else wants to happen, you can get it can get ... well, I was only the words starting with F,. PHIL DOBBIE [00:05:38] Stuffed. Let's go to with stuffed. STEVE KEEN [00:05:41] Consequently, there is there is no capacity to make a decision unless it's a decision which supports the direction of the Maastricht Treaty and makes it even more difficult to spend or create government money in even more difficult to rescue people than in the dire circumstances of the Corona virus. So this could be the death knell. What I'd like to see happen is Italy to say, we've had enough, every bank account in Italy is now a Lira account, the new lira is worth one euro, we repudiate its national debts, including the German and French banks, you guys can get stuffed and we're starting our own monetary system again. PHIL DOBBIE [00:06:18] Do you think that will happen? I mean, Greece came so close to it, didn't they? I mean, Yanis was was on the verge of pushing that button, if he could have got support within his within his own government. Do you think Italy will, and if Italy does then obviously, Greece and Spain are not going to be far behind. STEVE KEEN [00:06:34] It's possible. I mean, Italy's got an apalling trajectory in terms of the number of deaths right now.And with the leader of being a populist right wing populist as well, it's a possibility. We actually discussed in a previous podcast, what would shift after this? Would people say we overreacted, but think Italy is one country where peole are going to say, right, this went really  badly and we've got to do something about it, and we're not taking Belgium bullshit anymore.  If weare going to do something Belgium doesn't like anymore, because Belgiumbeing the centre of the EU, then we're going to do it. And so I think there's a possibility that the fracture could come through Italy over the Corona crisis. PHIL DOBBIE [00:07:19] It's interesting when you look back at the foundation of the EU. It really came out of a crisis, that  crisis being that the Second World War. Then we had, the Marshall Plan, and it was America pumping large amounts of money into Germany to industrialize Germany and the concerns from the French that Germany was going to become too dominant, which is why that, early on, France wanted to share a currency to try and avoid the the imbalance. Of course, Germany had all that debt to the US, written off. How quickly they forget. STEVE KEEN [00:07:49] And they also do not let's not forget German debt to Greece, for God's sake, which the Greeks wrote off. So it is remarkable how fast we fail to learn from history. And this will be on the level of the Second World War, by the way. The impact is so great, so rapid, whether it can be avoided or not, whether we could have reacted in a different fashion or not, that doesn't change it. It will be the biggest economic crisis since since the Great Depression and the fastest shut down of productive resources since the Second World. PHIL DOBBIE [00:08:23] So, at the same time, we had all this fear, didn't we, during the Brexit campaign that the EU was going to allow Turkey into the EU? We did allow Hungary into the EU. Janos Ader say now is basically a dictator. He's got full powers. He's enacted no sunset clause on on when that power might end. He's still a member of the EU. So basically dictators are allowed in the EU now. STEVE KEEN [00:08:51] Yeah, well, they always were. The whole idea that its a democratic institution as a joke and the joke is being exposed right now because, what would people want on the ground, they want, for example, they want masks. Now you can't have them. They want ICU units. No you can't have them all. This is democratic, isn't it? PHIL DOBBIE [00:09:09] So it goes one way or the other, doesn't it? It either falls apart or it becomes, which is perhaps more dangerous, it pulls together more. And we've spoken about this before. If the EU acts as one nation, then one nation would not allow the southern part of the country to have such a massive death threat. That would be people like people in London laughing in cocktail bars while people in the north of England died of starvation. You can't allow that to happen. So Europe isn't behaving like one country. It wants to be more integrated, but it's still going to be a series of sovereign nations. And each of those nations is still going to be in it for what they can what they can get out of it. STEVE KEEN [00:09:49] Yeah, that's the trouble. I mean, there's is a certain sense of European commonality, not quite that dire, but nonetheless, the Europeans identify Swiss and Germans and Dutch, et cetera, et cetera, first, then European second. Americans identify as Americans first and Alabamans and Californians and so on, second. So this is thing even Milton Friedman realised was when he wrote in opposition to the formation of the euro in the very first instance, that you don't have the degree of commonality you need. Also, in a very important point, which even again, even Milton Friedman realised this, you don't have a common treasury. Without a common treasury the expenses get passed from one effectively state treasury to another, which are spending constrained. And they resent, therefore, people moving from one state to another because you impose the burden of the wealth in that person on their recipients state. So all these things just argue against the EU and the Euro from the very first outset. And the whole thing about it, is was supposed to strengthen Europe. Well, great. What's fabulous strengthening this has been. This has. First of all, it amplified the impact of the crisis back in 2008. Now its having a debilitating impact upon its capacity to respond to the Corona virus. They'd be better off by separating. And this is the great tragedy of the European Union. PHIL DOBBIE [00:11:05] Well, so will it then? If if Italy says that's it, as you say, we're going we're not going to pay off our debts, so you can get stuffed. So they pull out of the euro, even if they don't pull out of the EU,  and they went back to to the to their own currency, the lira, the that would pretty quickly devalue. They would have a competitive edge against Germany. They could build a manufacturing base to challenge Germany over time and a far healthier future for Italy. So why wouldn't they do it and why wouldn't everyone else follow them? STEVE KEEN [00:11:49]  I can still see people sticking on saying that we've got to maintain the euro. I wish people would learn from these sort of experiences. But again, as I've said in the last podcast, experience has made me rather pessimistic about the capacity of people to learn from experience. However, if the Italians did pull out and did go back to the Lira and could devalue against the euro, then they would lose one of the two main problems have had fromthe euro to begin with, which is, with a lower inflation rate than Germany, necessarily their goods got more expensive over time because they were not able to devalue. Once they can devalue, the difference in inflation rates doesn't matter. And therefore, the competitiveness that Lamborghini and Ferrari and Fiat have lost against Mercedes Benz and BMW would disappear and they could restrengthen their manufacturing sector. So it would be an amazing lesson in how how bad an idea was to form the euro in the first place, to get out of the damn thing and see the economy do quite well. And by the way, if they did actually write off all their debts, it's quite possible they could revalue against the euro and still do well, because they wouldn't be carrying any debts, whereas the rest of the European Union would. PHIL DOBBIE [00:13:01] And they could do that. Can they? STEVE KEEN [00:13:03] Yeh. Plenty of countries have written off their foreign debts in the past and as soon as they do it, people say your currency is going to plunge in value, because the market won't trust you. 30 seconds later, the bond traders absorb the whole experience and they're now buying your currency because you're no longer debt encumbered. PHIL DOBBIE [00:13:21] So what does it do to the banking sector in the in that process, though? STEVE KEEN [00:13:25] Well, again, you've got you've got to be ready at the central bank. There is actually an Italian central bank. Every European country has its own central bank. It just doesn't have a power to issue a currency. Suddenly you've got the power and you can therefore provide as much in the way of assets to the banking sector, so that its liabilities don'texceed the assets and therefore they don't go bankrupt, you can do that instantly. Then they would they would enable the banking sector to continue operating. PHIL DOBBIE [00:13:52] So say Italy and others then say, well, we're going to follow the same path - if that threat is made to the EU, is the EU going to look for a halfway house? Maybe the idea that everyone can have their own independent currencies, their own independent bank, and we just have a common trading currency, like we used to with the ECU. That is stripping back the EU so it becomes more like the common market. You get to that stage, then Britain might say, well, you know what, we don't want to be in the EU, but we might be part of this. STEVE KEEN [00:14:31] The common market was a relatively sensible idea. It gave you a chance to have economies of scale across the whole continent, which was the objective of the European Union in the first instance. The mistake was forming the Euro as well. So, yes, you could be quite effective. And my argument always been, use the euro for international trade, to trade between countries of the European Union, use your own currency domestically. And that the real appeal to the public of the euro, and I've experienced this with the amount of travelling I've done in the European Union, is you follow exactly the same currency - you face no currency loss when you go from Germany to France, Italy to Spain and so on. And that's personally a very attractive advantage of the euro. My argument has been ,let the European Central Bank take over the currency conversion responsibilities. So you give all the private institutions impossible competition. The government bureaucracy converts the currency at exactly the exchange rate. If you have a thousand lira and that's worth two thousand Francs, you walk in with a thousand lire, you walk out with two thousand francs, you suffer zero currency loss going from one country to another. That'd be a central role for also the European Central Bank. And then with that there's no need to have the same currency across the whole of the continent. As a community, you ensure that no individual loses out of the ridiculous mark-ups that these companies make for exchanging currency. PHIL DOBBIE [00:15:59] But you know what? I wonder whether, in fact, that that becomes less of an issue going forward as we have more technology and more competition for that side of the banking sector for foreign exchange, which we're seeing quite a lot of. So you have a you have a card. You don't you don't really care. You go from you go from Germany into Italy. You switch currencies. You've got a vague awareness of what the exchange rate may be. And you've signed up to a bank or a card which is going to give you the best possible exchange rate. Does it really matter? STEVE KEEN [00:16:31] Well, I'm a heavy user of transferwise, for example. An unsponsored advertisement. it's a fabulous service transferwise and it saved me a large amount of money. PHIL DOBBIE [00:16:42] Other ones are available. WorldFirst and OFX. STEVE KEEN [00:16:45]  It's brilliant. They totally undercut the incredible mark-ups and the made in all those foreign to currency changes. I don't really worry about the cost going from one currency to the right anymore. I use the same card everywhere. PHIL DOBBIE [00:16:57]  So the idea of the euro being one unified currency to make it easy as you move around and as you trade. I'm just wondering whether that selling proposition is rapidly disappearing, so one of the key reasons for the euro, perhaps as is not such a key reason anymore. STEVE KEEN [00:17:13] Which it was a key reason back in 2000, maybe, or 1999, obviously.  But you're right, now that that's there's the technology and the fact that is an enormous financial incentive there for people to move into that particular space, that's a classic case of capitalism innovating to take advantage of a large discontinuity in the economy. PHIL DOBBIE [00:17:31] So if was to happen, if the euro did disappear, could the EU survive without it? And what form would that take, do you think? STEVE KEEN [00:17:37] Well, to go back to being a common market, that's all we need it to be. A common market, and you'd have a forum resolve disputes between states. And it should be one where where the states have representatives, the Italian, the French, the German, etc, governments coming together just to have conversations, not having idea of a bloody parliament, which itself is a farce. The parliament, as I said before, only decide to do what the European Commission tells it to do. Nothing like a democracy. The whole idea of the European Union, from the ordinary Europeans point of view is to end the old internecine warfare of the European continent. But from the point of view of the bureaucrats, who is it getting people out of the way and let the bureaucrats run everything. Because obviously with democracy that gave us fascism. PHIL DOBBIE [00:18:23] But it also gave us Donald Trump. STEVE KEEN [00:18:27] So, you know, I'm not saying democracy is perfect by any stretch. And I want to get rid of it and replace it with a set of skilled individuals who don't want to do the job, who are system dynamic specialists and united by intelligent software. That's what we really need to run the complex system of the world we're in these days rather than the popularity contest of standard democracy. PHIL DOBBIE [00:18:46] Right. Okay.  Are you going to be the head of that government as well? I mean, you. STEVE KEEN [00:18:51] So please, please, please. PHIL DOBBIE [00:18:57] Herr Keen. My arms in the air, as I talk to you,. STEVE KEEN [00:18:59] I'm tickling your underarms. PHIL DOBBIE [00:19:02] I'm loving it. STEVE KEEN [00:19:09] Let's let's let's listen to a podcast on that particular issue - democracy versus versus systemic governance. That's that's an important point later on. PHIL DOBBIE [00:19:18] Gee. All right. So back to the EU, though. I mean, what we're describing then, really is that it's a common market. There has to be agreement on standards. Do you do governments then say, well, we're gonna have this common common market, we need to make sure you're not subsidizing your products and dumping products on our market because you've given so much state subsidy. I guess you still need regulations like that, don't you?  So that you've got a level playing field. STEVE KEEN [00:19:50] You know, some sort of commonality. It's common market, it has to have common regulations. So that's okay. It's the imposition of the budgetary noose of the Maastricht Treaty and the inability of any decision to be reached that isn't something the European Commission wants. It's having bureaucrats,  who are mainly trained economists and that's the bloody problem. Trained engineers would be a damn sight better. PHIL DOBBIE [00:20:18] Right. But a lot of it is just finding commonality of a level playing field for competition isn't it? so setting setting standards. I mean you're not going to do that by parliament. Someone's got to establish what their standards are going to be. STEVE KEEN [00:20:30] Equally, at the same point, there's also one thing I hope we learn out of this crisis, is that the whole year of a globalised integrated economy is a mistake at a biological level. You need to have regionalized economies. I've been arguing for a long time that we need a biological approach to economics in general, and that would never have had us having globalised production systems, because globalised production systems are great for pathogens. They are not fabulous with humans. So I hope we learned that lesson that we don't go back to the obsession about bigger and bigger trading blocks, and more and more free trade, and more and more transportation around the planet, etc, etc. More and more consumption of oil. PHIL DOBBIE [00:21:08] But that is a good reason for making sure that the trade within the EU continues then isn't it? So that the UK is not shipping a whole load of stuff across the ocean from the US or from South America or from China. We are better off eating fruit, for example, that comes from the south of Europe STEVE KEEN [00:21:29] Exactly. You try to divine a regional trading bloc. I'm not my actual principle here is what's called the von Neumann machine. Had ever heard of that one? PHIL DOBBIE [00:21:36] I think I had one but I couldn't work the instructions. STEVE KEEN [00:21:39] No, you didn't. A von Neumann machine is a machine, that can make other machines and also make itself. One of the most brilliant men of all time, von Neumann, came up with the concept of this. He said humanity needs to create a machine which is capable of making all of the other machines needed, as well as reproducing itself. And then you'd send that inter outer space and you could colonize the entire galaxy. But the idea, we should think in terms of creating regions of the planet, which are von Neumann machines, meaning they create everything they need as well being able to reproduce themselves over time. So you say, what scale do we need for this region to be self-contained and have multiple self-contained regions lik,e that which don't need to trade with others. You don't go for this obsession with a globalised approach because that works in favour of the pathogens, that works in favour of humans overloading the planet, completely ignoring the other species, and then we get the biological venereal disease coming back at us. PHIL DOBBIE [00:22:43] But I mean, all the more reason for the EU to, in some form, even if it is just a common market working to common standards, but everybody has their own central bank, they determine the way they operate, how much they borrow, how much that their debt to GDP ratio is they are that totally independent sovereign nations, but they have a common agreement on what they're going to sell and the standards between them. That's gotta be the utopia, hasn't it? Because it does create that trading bloc that the EU could then say, well, we really don't need anyone else. STEVE KEEN [00:23:19] To reach that Utopia we've had to go through a dyspotian experience was necessary. But, yes, treating it as a regional production system, intending to achieve overall self-sufficiency across all the products that are necessary to sustain a decent high human society and a decent environment, not just for ourselves, but for the other species on the planet. That's the way we should be thinking in the future. PHIL DOBBIE [00:23:46] Is that going to happen, though? Will the EU survive the way it is? Could, for example, if Italy say we want out of the euro, but we'll stay in the EU,  to which that the payoff would be you can't write off all your debt, you don't have to pay it up back after off over over 20 years. You're gonna have to live in austerity and and perhaps more people will die from malnutrition than died from from the virus as you attempt to pay all this back. That seems more likely than Italy pulling out totally and the EU collapsing, doesn't it, sadly? STEVE KEEN [00:24:21] Yeah. I mean, the thing is, though, lets remember there have been other Pan European and pan global organisations which have disappeared. For example, what's the most recent announcement of the League of Nations? PHIL DOBBIE [00:24:33] Yeah, they have been very quiet lately, haven't they? STEVE KEEN [00:24:36] Died about 80 years ago. It was killed by the First World War. So these organisations have failed in the past. And I can think of no better organisation to fail than the European Union. PHIL DOBBIE [00:24:49]  But we don't. But we don't want it to disappear and then just have a series of independent nations do we? STEVE KEEN [00:24:58]  Yanis Varoufakis has finally come around to saying he reckoned the British did the right thing for the wrong reasons when leaving the European Union. It's very hard to expect somebody to who's you whose entire life has been around trying to globalise everything and trying to minimise trade barriers, and letting competition rip and ignoring sustainability while pushing efficiency, it's very hard to have a person suddenly flip over to a biological way of thinking. You have simply got the wrong people in there and getting rid of them is impossible in a bureaucracy. So. It may be that it has to fail to be replaced by something more sensible. PHIL DOBBIE [00:25:41] I wonder what would replace it. Could we in fact get a group of countries like perhaps France, maybe we'll include Germany, the UK and Ireland and Spain and Greece saying, well, okay, let's if that's all fallen apart, but we need to trade with each other because we've got so much trade across all on across our borders, so let's at least agree some standards and let's form the new EU. STEVE KEEN [00:26:03] That's definitely what happens, I think. And the emphasis has to be on the ecological and social sustainability of the society, not this obsession with competition and efficiency. So it could happen, but I certainly can't see the bureaucrats in Brussels being the ones who lead the charge. PHIL DOBBIE [00:26:20] And how quickly is it going to fall apart? Then, do you reckon? Is that going to be after this, after over this virus, the second half of this year, is this gonna be the big story? STEVE KEEN [00:26:28] No, again, because of my cynicism about people's capacity to learn from experience. I think we'll go through this, there will be in aftermath. We will continue on and then something else will hit us. I mean, 2020 has been a one and a dog of the year. We had the fires in Australia and the floods in Australia, then the locust plagues in Africa, which we've stopped talking about but is probably still happening, now the Corona virus. We're only one third of the way into the year. What the hell's going to come along next? PHIL DOBBIE [00:27:00] Well, we've got a lot more of this to go havcen't we? I think this is going to keep us going for the rest of the year. But the idea that this will be almost swept under the carpet, and its oging to take something else to disturb the EU, I wonder if that's the case, because, look, it's over 17000 deaths now in Italy, less than 2000 in Germany and 14000 in Spain. There's such a huge difference, a huge disparity, between nations. And surely people are going to be looking at that and saying, how did we allow this to happen? I mean, we're talking about the price on human life. Surely there's going to be some recompense from all of this. STEVE KEEN [00:27:36] Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, just looking at the doubling rate, by the way, for Germany is not looking as healthy as a doubling rate for Spain right now, strangely enough. So maybe, maybe there'll be a price to pay in the future. PHIL DOBBIE [00:27:52] And that's the bad news, because if Germany gets hit as much as everybody else, then that argument that there's a disparity on this disappears. To which the conclusion will be in Germany and from the powers behind the EU, that that was a crisis that we all faced, we all paid the price for it, now, let's carry on as normal. STEVE KEEN [00:28:14] This was a crisis nobody expected except anybody who'd read Laurie Garrett's 'The Coming Plague.'  And these are people who've been completely sidelined with the redesign of society. These are epidemiologists, the specialists in humans as a biological species, not humans as the dominant economic force on the planet. They're the ones who saw this coming. They've been sidelined. The one thing I hope to happen is, is that we pay much less attention to bloodyeconomists and a damn sight more to epidemiologists, engineers, physicists and atmospheric scientists. They're the people we need to listen to, not bloody economists. The EU was built by economists. That's one of the best reasons to get rid of it. PHIL DOBBIE [00:28:55] We should leave it there. But one final question is, I mean, a lot of it does relate to the acceptance of debt, doesn't it? That's the core of all of this. So German debt to GDP is 60 or 70 percent government debt versus 200 percent in Japan.  The US is shooting up there as well. Greece, I think, is less than 200 percent. Italy is relatively low. If you ijust said, well, okay, let's accept 200 percent as acceptable. Then you would have allowed a massive increase in spending. STEVE KEEN [00:29:28] Yeah. Government deb is not the problem. We've had many talks on this issue in terms of the financial issues as well, but the whole obsession with government debt has always been wrong. It's always come out of neoclassical economics and applying a household analogy to an overall economy. It's the private debt that matters. That's what's caused all the dilemmas. That's what has led to the boom beforehand and the bust as well. Hopefully, some of that understanding will get through during this crisis as well. PHIL DOBBIE [00:30:00] Right. So if the EU survive, but they accepted that point, could it could it survive and do good rather than be evil. If it if it accepted the fact that we should allow countries to run much heavier debt. STEVE KEEN [00:30:14] Potentially, but again, that means countries would have divergent inflation rates. The euro should not survive. That's the one thing, the euro should not survive. The European Union potentially could survive,  if it if it learns from this crisis and fundamentally changes its direction. But that's like expecting a Ptolemaic astronomer to suddenly understand Copernicus and stop drawing epicycles and start thinking about ellipsis centred on the sun. People's minds a rereshaped by the belief systems they have, and that reshaping means they are simply incapable, their neurones are wired their own way. It is it is not possible for someone to change the neurological wiring as fast as it is for a new person to come along with a fairly open neural network and relearn these issues. So in many ways we just got to retire the people who currently run the European Union. If we could keep the buildings and send the people off to retirement homes, we might get somewhere. PHIL DOBBIE [00:31:14] Generational change is what you're talking about, isn't it? And they're all looking pretty old. Time to shuffle on and do your next thing. Good to talk Steve.  PHIL DOBBIE [00:31:25] And talking about neoclassical economics, we are going to look at Adam Smith next time. Is there anything good that came out of Adam Smith's work? Anything that we can take and say, well, that was all right. We'll look at that next time on the Debunking Economics podcast with Professor Steve Keen. I'm Phil Dobbie. See you then.

Welcome to Finance and Fury, The Furious Friday edition What has created a system where the share market can go down so quickly? The perfect storm – Panic, OPEC agreement breaking down – computer algorithms kicking in, mass sell-offs of index funds The recent collapse in the stock market – speculation is rampart with discussion of a new crash looming on the horizon – even with Monday’s record breaking drop – market into retreat Important context – that a chain reaction collapse was only kept at bay due to massive liquidity injections by the Federal Reserve’s overnight repo loans should not be ignored Began in September 2019 - has grown to over $100 billion per night… all that to support the largest financial bubble in human history with global derivatives estimated at $1.2 quadrillion – or 20 times the global GDP Thanks to media – and not to be offensive – but general financially illiteracy – the underlying reasons as to why the economic system is so fragile and crash has been misdiagnosed as the coronavirus Today – want to give a bit of context around the structural issues to a financial collapse – if it does manifest into one Similar to a virus spreading – and killing people – depends on the hosts health – healthy wont die the nature of the modern financial system with panic and collapses is very similar – the US economy catches a cold – the world markets collapse   Big topic – so where to start – first with some background In some previous episodes – Quoted Franklin Delano Roosevelt in his Inaugural Address of 1933 - “The money changers have fled from their high seats in the temple of our civilization. We may now restore that temple to the ancient truths. The measure of the restoration lies in the extent to which we apply social values more noble than mere monetary profit.” This was in reference to the ‘money changers’ only being able to create the bubble of the 1920s (roaring 20s) via access to the commercial deposits of banks – leveraging these using margin loans and debt instruments for profit over investing into productive side of economy Roosevelt – for all his faults in socialising the US system – wanted to take on Wall Street – Didn’t have the publics best interest in mind – but rather nationalising (taking over) the banking system – wasn’t able to so instead created the banking Act of 1933 – especially the “Glass-Steagall” section of the act - forced the absolute separation of productive from speculative banking, guaranteeing via the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) only those commercial banking assets associated with the productive economy, but forcing any speculative losses arising from investment banking to be suffered by the gambler This focus on the now rather than later ushered in the system of “post-industrial monetarism”.  This would be a system ushered in by Richard Nixon’s announcement of the destruction of the fixed-exchange-rate Bretton Woods system and its replacement by the “floating rate” system of post 1971 fame. During that same fateful year of 1971, another ominous event took place: the formation of the Rothschild Inter-Alpha Group of banks under the umbrella of the Royal Bank of Scotland, which today controls upwards of 70% of the global financial system The intentions of this group were well laid out in the 1983 speech by Lord Jacob Rothschild: “two broad types of giant institutions, the worldwide financial service company and the international commercial bank with a global trading competence, may converge to form the ultimate, all-powerful, many-headed financial conglomerate.” Wanted to get commercial and investment banks back into bed with each other – to use debt and financial instruments to make themselves filthy rich This policy demanded the destruction of the sovereign nation-state financial system – nothing really new – the age-old scheme of controlling the money system – but this time it would be on a global level At around the same time - had Milton Freedman’s economic theories – around shareholder theory – argues that a company has no "social responsibility" to the public or society; its only responsibility is to its shareholders - revolutionised wall street to focus on maximising profits in the short term – long gone is the long term focus of companies with what is best in 10 years – now it is quarterly based – hence why share buybacks are so prevalent – what can be done now to boost prices – even at the detriment of the long term A record number of CEOs resigned right before the crash – around 220 in total I believe – but major companies Due to the Interconnection of the financial system and share markets – Deregulation of the Financial system – whilst regulation of every other business increased Deregulations – Two major financial centres of London (UK) and New York (USA) London - 1986, the City of London announced the beginning of a new era of economic irrationalism – known as the “Big Bang” deregulation - swept aside the separation of commercial deposit taking and investment banking The “Big Bang” set a precedent for similar financial de-regulation into the “Universal Banking” model in other parts of the western world USA – In September 1987 – the 20-year market gain through speculation resulted in a 23% collapse of the Dow Jones Within hours of this crash, international emergency meetings had been convened with former JP Morgan tool Alan Greenspan introducing a “solution” which would have the future echoes of hyperinflation and fascism written all over it. The creation of a new instrument - “Creative financial instruments” was the Orwellian name given to the new financial asset popularized by Greenspan, but otherwise known as “derivatives” - Came up with the derivative instruments as a concept and the time bomb is set - Still had the problem of separation of commercial and investment banks – but by 1999 a politically castrated Bill Clinton found himself signing into law a treaty authored by then Treasury Secretary Larry Summers known as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, which would be the final nail in the coffin for the Glass-Steagall separation of commercial and investment banking in the United States. The new age of unregulated trading and creation of over-the-counter derivatives caused these strange financial instruments to grow from $60 trillion in 2000 to $600 trillion by 2008 – But around $1.2 quadrillion today New problems of supercomputing and algorithm trading - creation of new complex formulas which could associate values to price differentials on securities and insured debts that could then be “hedged” on those very spot and futures markets made possible via the destruction of the Bretton Woods system in 1971. So while an exponentially self-generating monster was created that could end nowhere but in a meltdown, “market confidence” rallied back in force with the new flux of easy money – under the new Fiat system Interconnect nature – Globalism, trade and reliance on other countries for production - Nafta, the euro and the end of history During this same period of Clintons administration - another change to legislation occurred - was passed called the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). With this Agreement made law, protective programs that had kept North American factories in the U.S and Canada were struck down, allowing for the export of the lifeblood of highly skilled industrial workforce to Mexico where skills were low, technologies lower, and salaries lower still. With a stripping of its productive assets, North America became increasingly reliant on exporting cheap resources and services for its means of existence. Again, the physically productive sector of society would collapse, yet monetary profits in financial sector boomed Replicated in Europe with the creation of the Maastricht Treaty in 1992 establishing the Euro by 1994 Universal Banking, NAFTA, Euro integration and the creation of the derivative economy in a space of just several years would induce a cartel of finance through newly legalized mergers and acquisitions at a rate never before seen Created mass monopolies over the economy – companies from the 1980s were absorbed into each other at great speed through the 1990s in true “survival of the fittest” fashion as regulations on domestic companies in the productive sector were introduced But counter parts in non-western countries didn’t have to abide by same regulations – so with companies working under the Freidman method of profit maximisation – production and jobs and contribution towards GDP left western nations – Free trade = factors of production like labour shift By the 2000s – the fundamental health of productive companies was diminished – whist the speculative side to the economy – investment banking and derivatives were let out of the box   When the first signs really all kicked off – THE 2000-2008 FRENZY With Glass-Steagall now removed, legitimate capital turned into speculation – nothing productive to invest in anymore in the economy – so looked for profits elsewhere. Billions were now poured into mortgage-backed securities (MBS), a market which had been artificially plunged to record-breaking interest rate lows of 1-2% for over a year by the US Federal Reserve - so borrowing was easy, and the returns on the investments into the MBSs massive in comparison The speculation also swelled as the values of the houses skyrocketed far beyond the real values to the tune of one hundred thousand dollar homes selling for 5-6 times that price within the span of several years – due to borrowing capacities increasing and the loss lending regulations As long as no one assumed this growth was ab-normal, and the unpayable nature of loans given – creating a leveraged rise in assets - then profits were supposed to just continue infinitely The stunning “success” of securitizing housing debts immediately induced a wave of sovereign wealth funds to come into prominence applying the same model that had been used in the case of mortgage-backed securities (MBS) and collateralized debt obligations (CDO) to the debts of entire nations – Australia is no different The securitizing of bundled packages of sovereign debts that could then be infinitely leveraged on the de-regulated world markets would no longer be considered an act of national treason, but the key to easy money. Regulators and politicians said they fixed the problems from 2008 – but Nothing changed though For all the talk of an “FDR revival” under Obama, speculation wasn’t actually regulated under the Dodd-Frank Act or the Volker Rule of 2010. No productive credit was created to grow the real economy under a national mission as was the case in 1933-1938. Banks were not broken up while derivatives GREW by 40% with the new bubble concentrated in the corporate/household debt sector now collapsing. During this time, nation states continued to be stripped, as austerity was rammed down the throats of nations. Western economies – Like Australia and USA started to struggle further – talking about the underlying health of countries and their productive output – speculative assets or hard assets like shares and property did well – but now suffer through large gains and large losses – most recently is a good example- ASX lost 27% in 3 weeks GFC from October 07 to March 09 – around 18 months for 50% loss – from Aug 08 to March 09 – 34% loss in 7 months – we are almost there in 3 weeks The ruling class, the media and many others were surprised by the 2016 Brexit and election of President Trump But when viewed from the point of those who were affected by these global focused policies and speculation over productivity – shouldn’t come as a surprise – why a lot of countries are seeing a new wave of nationalist spirit has become a fire which the technocrats have lost their capacity to snuff out. Summary  Economy and by extension the markets are fragile - No longer is the focus for the board members of companies to be productive – or for institutional investors to invest into companies long term that are productive in the economy – core of the post-industrial monetarism model Focus is in profit maximisation at any cost through speculation – The cost though is increased volatility in markets Nature of the new beast – have to ride it out – but thanks to the speculative nature – cheap shares are available every few years Thank you for listening to today's episode. If you want to get in contact you can do so here: http://financeandfury.com.au/contact/  

We talk to political economist Helen Thompson about the birth of the Euro and its tortuous recent history. Whose idea was it in the first place and how much of its current troubles were baked into its origins? A story of ambition, intrigue and unintended consequences.Talking Points:The euro was the brainchild of the French government, sometime around late 1987.The French had become extremely dissatisfied with the exchange rate mechanism. They thought the set-up benefitted Germany to the expense of everyone else.France saw monetary union as a way to Europeanize monetary policy.The French persuaded the rest of the European community to set up a committee to look into monetary union, which was chaired by the former French finance minister.He understood that union would have to be on German terms: there would be an independent central bank committed to price stability.Helmut Kohl also wanted shifts on the institutional questions within the European Community.The Maastricht Treaty was agreed in December 1991—ratification went on for two years.The treaty is about much more than monetary union.During contentious elections, Kohl started talking about monetary union as a symbol of European peace rather than a purely macroeconomic issue.The general improvement in economic conditions in the mid-1990s allowed the monetary union to proceed.This doesn’t mean that there weren’t significant issues, but there wasn’t an existential crisis like the one that would emerge in 2009 with Greece.Before the euro itself got going, there was the convergence of interest rates. Even for states like Italy and Greece, that has been a clear advantage.You also see some alignment on inflation. But you don’t get fiscal convergence. Some states run much higher deficits than others.If the euro were to end now, it would be because of an implosion not states voluntarily seceding.There is more skepticism over the euro in Eastern Europe.There is a recession coming; this will put more pressure on this system.The flashpoint may be Germany. There is going to be considerable pressure to go back to quantitative easing. Whether Draghi’s successor can secure tacit German approval is a different question. Further Learning:Helen for the LRB: Will the EU hold? See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Why Iceland jailed 40 bankers after the 2008 financial crisis, how the Maastricht Treaty gave birth to the EU, plus America's first female airline pilots, Cameroon's historic referendum and homeless, drunk and yet a genius in the USSR. (Photo: Protesters on the streets of Reykjavik demand answers from the government and the banks about the country's financial crisis, Nov. 2008. (Halldor Kolbeins/AFP/Getty Images)

In February 1992, European ministers from 12 countries signed a treaty that would lead towards greater economic and political unity. The European Union would become the biggest free trading bloc in the world, but over the years it has survived several rocky moments as individual countries have questioned whether they want to be included. Senior EU Official Jim Cloos was one of those involved in drafting the Maastricht Treaty, and he explained to Rebecca Kesby how exciting it was to be involved in the project in those early days.(Photo: The flag logo of The European Union)

Kate Nicholls became CEO of UK Hospitality last year when the British Hospitality Association and the Association of Licensed Multiple Retailers merged. Kate tells SoTogether UK & Ireland co-chair Alistair Drummond about her career, from growing up in County Durham to working as a political researcher after graduating to getting into the hospitality industry. During her spell in Westminster in the early 90s Kate worked on the Maastricht Treaty, so shares her insight on European relations now the country appears to be going the other way.

The crisis within the European Union never was limited to the ability of Greece, Spain, Italy, or any other nation to repay their debt. Beginning with the Maastricht Treaty, signed in February 1992, Helga Zepp LaRouche and the Schiller Institute have repeatedly pointed out that the EU institutions were badly flawed from the start, by design, as they were created to serve the interests of neo-liberal financial speculators of the City of London and Wall Street, and the unilateralist neo-cons allied with them, not the people of the nations of Europe. Since Brexit, in country after country in Europe, voters have been in a state of rebellion, rejecting the established parties, just as American voters did in electing Donald Trump, who promised to end the era of corporate free trade policies, austerity, bailouts and regime change wars. Most significant, was Trump's rejection of the Obama policy of confrontation with Russia and China, which was supported by most EU nations. Trump's determination to meet with Russian President Putin, to achieve a cooperative relationship with him, has created a new level of hysteria, with the meeting of the two now set for Helsinki triggering new, even more extreme panic among governments struggling to survive. The resignations this week of top officials in the May government in the U.K. is exemplary of a regime in disarray, as officials are incapable of thinking outside the axioms of the rapidly disintegrating institutions. Helga Zepp LaRouche was never content to merely point out the shortcomings of these institutions. She has led an effective international campaign, to gain support for a New Paradigm, based on the economic ideas of her husband, Lyndon LaRouche, many of which are now shaping the global development plan of China's President Xi Jinping, China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). She has played a leading role in introducing the principles behind this plan to Western governments, many of which are now participating on some level in the BRI. Her recent call for the EU to drop its opposition to China's BRI, and adopt instead the "Singapore example," to instead work with China to develop Africa, is being discussed in many countries, though many governments are still proving to be incapable of breaking from the constraints of the old paradigm. Join Mrs. LaRouche your host Harley Schlanger this Thursday, and every Thursday, as she presents the latest update on this dynamic unfolding process, and provides strategic guidance to citizens who wish to move their nations out from under the dictatorship represented by the old, submissive thinking, and bring them into the New Paradigm.

A meltdown seems to be happening in the Italian economy. Steve Keen tells Phil Dobbie that it's the failings of the Maastricht Treaty coming home to roost. Does this mean that Italy could be on the verge of pulling out of the Euro, if not the EU completely? Wouldn't it make their country bankrupt? And what can the ECB do to try and resolve the situation. In this podcast we look through the potential outcomes in crisis evolving in Italy. Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information.

On this episode of The Dismal Science, Stephen and Ivan talk Brexit and welcome their first guest, AICD Senior Policy Adviser Lysarne Pelling, who came in to discuss proposed safe harbour laws that could save companies from painful insolvencies. Discussed in this episode: [0:59] UK triggers article 50 [1:15] Stephen's reaction the day of the Brexit vote [1:35] Maastricht Treaty [2:09] >50% of UK trade is with the EU [2:24] Gloomy forecasts for UK economy [3:58] Requirement EU 27 unanimity [4:11] Nationalist parties on the rise in Europe [4:58] Impact on UK financial services [9:55] Draft insolvency law reforms [10:41] When does safe harbour apply? [10:52] Severe penalties for insolvent trading [12:27] Insolvency law in UK and Singapore [13:24] Arrium administration's effect on Whyalla [15:43] Distressed debt funds [15:55] US Chapter 11 provision [16:51] Productivity Commission on an Australian Chapter 11 [19:20] Email Lysarne your thoughts [20:00] RBA cash rate Tweet at us @aicdirectors or message us on Facebook with feedback on the show or suggestions for upcoming topics  

What follows is an edited partial transcript of my conversation with George Bragues of the University of Guelph-Humber. We discussed his new book, Money, Markets, and Democracy: Politically Skewed Financial Markets and How to Fix Them. This is his second appearance on this show, you can hear the first one here. Petersen: So your book looks at the interaction between Democratic politics and financial markets. In your introduction, you quote the Greek Prime Minister Alexi Tsipras, who claimed that "democracy cannot be blackmailed." And this was in the context of the 2015 bailout referendum that would have helped pay some of the massive Greek debt but at a cost of forcing them to adopt fiscal austerity. So, can you talk a little bit about that situation and how it played out and also what it tells us generally about the relationship between democracy and finance? Bragues: Yes, sure. That situation has its origins about a year or two after the financial crisis of 2008. The financial crisis of 2008 initially arose out of the subprime mortgage sector in the United States. It affected banks worldwide that were holding or otherwise exposed to the subprime mortgage assets. But then as one of the spillovers of this crisis we had pressure on countries in southern Europe including Portugal, Spain, and Greece. And so it all came to a head in 2010 and back then it was Nicolas Sarkozy and Merkel, Germany's chancellor---who's still around---was a player, and they came up with a framework to bail out these countries including Greece. So, as part of those bailouts, Greece had to comply with various conditions including the fiscal austerity measures that you mentioned, there was a privatization that had to be done but it didn't go so well and so in early 2015---if I remember these dates correctly---Tsipras is leading what was then a sort of outsider party, one of the two major parties in Greece. And so they thought that they would take a different approach to the previous Greek government which was to play ball with mainly Germany and instead of playing ball with Germany and trying to use measures to get their budget under control they thought that they would try to essentially threaten the breakdown of the financial system. a breakdown of the euro unless Greece were forgiven their debt or otherwise given more lenient measures. The European establishment wasn't buying into that. So this is when Tsipras went to a vote, a referendum on a bailout package. He won that vote, that is to say, the Greek people voted resoundingly against the European establishment of the time, but that ended up not really mattering. The European establishment said basically we want our debt paid, we're willing to renegotiate the debt and you have to comply with these conditions. And so that was a situation where democracy and the markets came into play. The Greek government was hoping that by creating a crisis in the markets through a democratic act, one of the most democratic acts you can imagine, which is a referendum---because in a referendum the people vote directly on a policy---that they were hoping that democracy would have its way---through the markets---would have its way. It didn't work out. So, I start my book off with that event because it nicely and dramatically---the Greek situation is still ongoing---but it nicely illustrates how politics and the markets interact. And politics today in most of the developed world means democracy and this interaction between politics and markets, while known, while recognized, I don't think its full implications have been recognized and that's why I decided to write a book. Petersen: So, with the bailout referendum---this is a massive debt---I believe it was 177% of Greece's GDP? Bragues: That's correct, yes. It's probably different now. It's probably higher now, I haven't looked at the latest numbers. Petersen: Even if they paid their entire output and didn't eat or consume anything, it would still take them almost two years to pay it off, which of course is unfeasible. And then they were trying to refuse to pay it off and I suppose they were hoping that markets would have a big reaction and then when they didn't their leverage was gone. They didn't have the bargaining power they thought they had. Bragues: That's correct. The markets the next day---the referendum took place on a Sunday---and the next day the markets were down---not down significantly, specifically those in Europe, which would be more closely impacted---and the euro which was the key financial instrument in this entire drama barely reacted at all to the referendum result. Now, part of that was because by this point---I mentioned before that this is a drama that had started back in 2010---the reason why the markets' reactions were muted by this time, much of the debt that the Greeks held were no longer held in private hands. In other words, they were not held by private market players, whether that be pension funds, commercial banks, hedge funds, and other institutional investors but they had been effectively transferred to the government, whether to taxpayers or to central banks who had started---even though this goes against the Maastricht Treaty that brought the euro into being---the Central Bank started buying European bonds, and I'm talking here specifically about the European Central Bank. So, that's how it's played out. It's still currently playing out because Greece is back in the news because part of the deal that was made in the aftermath of the 2015 referendum is that Greece would still have to comply with various fiscal policy requirements and in order to get additional disbursements from the so-called troika, and the same party is in power, Tsipras continues to be in power and they still as you'd expect they would rather pay less debt or at least pay the debt on less onerous terms. Petersen: The odd thing is that people keep lending them money when they're so resistant to paying back their loans. Bragues: Yes, and that brings up the larger question I talk about in the book which is the role of the bond markets. The bond market is it is one of the biggest of the financial markets. In the book I go through the main ones. These would include the stock market, the derivatives market, which has grown dramatically since the early 1970s, I go through the currency market, which is the biggest one, at least on a per-day trading rate. But the bond market is huge. The bond market is a lot bigger than the stock market, it doesn't get as much public attention as the stock market does. It is not the subject of a cocktail party conversation the way the stock market is, but the bond market is huge. It is a major lifeline for governments---most governments today. It's hard to think of an exception among the democracies now---most governments today do not finance their expenditures, their infrastructure, their social programs through taxes. They run deficits and those deficits have effectively become perpetual. If you go back to the early 1970s---and we can come back to the issue why the early 1970s is such a critical date---but you go back the early 1970s, you do find countries from time to time running fiscal surpluses, or running balanced budgets, but for the most part they're running deficits, and so as a result since then we've seen a sustained increase in the level of public debt as a percentage of GDP. And so we're getting close to levels that we haven't seen since World War Two among the OECD nations. So, the bond market is a key player. I argue in the book that the bond market is an enabler of the worst fiscal habits of democratic states, that democratic political systems have an inherent tendency to overspend, and that the bond market becomes a very enticing place that politicians look to in order to finance the spending that helps them get them elected. And so then the question arises why do the bond markets keep on buying the bonds of these increasingly indebted states? I'm not sure I have the complete answer to that question. That was one of the questions that really got me thinking as I was writing the book. I think tentatively the factors are these: the key one is the desire for safety that seems to be very strong in the human psyche. So, I think we have to go into psychological explanations for this. The thing about government bonds, unlike bonds that you would buy, say, from a corporation, which is the other major sector of the bond market, government bonds are backed by taxes and taxes have to be paid. They are coerced from people. You don't pay your taxes, you'll either get fined or in a worst case scenario you end up doing time. A corporation doesn't have the same ability to gather money. It has to rely on the voluntary decisions of the buyers of its products. So, if you buy a bond in General Motors, or you buy a bond in Bell Canada or something like that, your ability to get money from that bond---and a bond is effectively, by the way, a loan that an investor extends to an entity, a government or corporate entity---so you buy a bond from Bell Canada or from some other private company, you've got to rely on the fact that they're going to be able to get people to buy their goods and services voluntarily. When you buy a government bond, you have the assurance that the entity who is supposed to pay you back the money has the power to force people to give it money and so that makes government bonds safer, in general, all else being equal than corporate bonds. And since people do crave safety, they do crave security---I don't want to get too much into the depths of human psychology here---but there's a deep-seated desire to avert risk and this is well known. Among financial academics we talk about it all the time, we talk about it in terms of risk aversion as being part of the model that we used to depict investor behavior. So, this is such a powerful desire to have safety when you invest your money, to know that if you plunk 1,000 dollars now and you're promised 2% interest, you will get that money back and a 2% interest at some future point in time. So, I think that's the most powerful driver for the demand of government bonds and that demand is so strong that investors will overlook the fiscal health of the countries to which they are effectively lending to. I think the other factor is legislation. There you look at the regulations specifically pension funds but also banks and so on have to operate under, if they're required to have a certain percentage what are deemed to be safe investments in their portfolios---by the way this also includes insurance companies---and safe investments invariably encompass and tend to get restricted to government bonds and so there's a built-in legislatively driven demand for government bonds and this plays out significantly with the commercial banks because they have to show to regulators that they have a certain level of core equity in their balance sheets. You look at these regulations---these are the Basel regulations---they have traditionally incentivized banks to buy their country's bonds. So, you've got a situation where Greek commercial banks tend to own a disproportionate amount of Greek government bonds or Italian commercial banks own disproportion amount of Italian government bonds. So, you have the banking sector effectively forced through legislation to have to finance the country's debt. Petersen: So just as a part of doing business, if you're a bank, you have to show that you're safe. There was this issue during the financial crisis of these AAA rated mortgage securities and if you think about it in terms of just supply and demand and all these things, it's not clear why the rating is so important. But then when you think about needing to prove to a third party that I am safe, then what others think that your assets are worth or how safe others think they are, becomes really important. And at least there's sort of a perverse element here where if you're lending to Iceland or Greece you can maybe get a higher return while still maybe appearing safe because you say, "well I've got all these government bonds," but the fact that they're not safe is why they can give you that higher return. And if you're managing a bank you want to earn a high return but you still want to appear safe and if you lose money you want to lose money when everyone's losing money so that you can say "hey it's not my fault, not personally at least." Bragues: That's another factor too that everyone---and John Maynard Keynes, I don't agree with everything he says, but he's pretty good on this point, on the behavior of investment managers. You have a huge incentive as an investment manager to go with the crowd because if you're right with the crowd you can bask in the general adulation that all investment managers are receiving at that point in time, you're generating nice returns for folks. But if things go awry, the crowd becomes more important as a kind of protection device against criticism because you can always say---as you point out---that this is a systemic issue, I couldn't do anything about it everybody else also was adversely affected. And so that does tend to work in favor of government bonds and does tend to over inflate the level of demand for government bonds relative to what they should get if you had a truly free market, people were just free to buy whatever bonds they thought would fit their risk return preferences. I think that's a key factor as to why I believe that bond markets end up not being vigilantes. There's this line Edward Danny, a well-known analyst on Wall Street, came up with this phrase 'bond market vigilantes'. I believe it was in the 1990s and it supposedly referred to this group of people in the bond market who were always on the lookout for countries that were running fiscal deficits, that were doing the wrong things economically, and that these bond market vigilantes would pick on these countries by selling their bonds, shorting their bonds, and then putting those countries in a bind supposedly by raising the interest rates that they would have to pay any time they issued bonds again. But the reality is that the bond market vigilante---if it exists---it exists too late. You look at the history of the bond market---we're talking a couple centuries now the bond market is actually older than the stock market---you look at this market and the vigilantes only come up really late in the game when it's pretty obvious that the government in question cannot pay and so the bond market doesn't do---I would argue---the job that it advertises: namely, always keeping yields in line with risk. It does tend to underestimate the level of risk, specifically with when it comes to governments. This is a partial transcript only. For our full conversation, listen to the episode.

In 1993, Denmark held a second referendum on greater EU integration, after a previous vote failed. But angry anti-EU demonstrators took to the streets of the capital, and riots followed. We speak to the former foreign minister who campaigned for a 'Yes' vote, and a former activist who protested against any Danish involvement in the EU, but who has since changed his mind about Europe.Image: Riot police in Copenhagen after Denmark voted Yes to ratify the Maastricht Treaty in May 1993. (Credit: AFP)

In 1993, Denmark held a second referendum on greater EU integration, after a previous vote failed. But angry anti-EU demonstrators took to the streets of the capital, and riots followed. We speak to the former foreign minister who campaigned for a 'Yes' vote, and a former activist who protested against any Danish involvement in the EU, but who has since changed his mind about Europe. Image: Riot police in Copenhagen after Denmark voted Yes to ratify the Maastricht Treaty in May 1993. (Credit: AFP)

How those within the Brussels Beltway in the EU institutions must pine for the simple days of the past. Not only was the European project in itself far less contested, but the nature of the journalism surrounding the EU was also far more accommodating. One of the main lessons of John Lloyd and Cristina Marconi‘s fascinating book Reporting the EU: News, Media and the European Institutions (I. B. Tauris, 2014) is how much it has mirrored the evolution of the European project itself. In the first couple of decades the journalists were as likely to be true believers as the Eurocrats in the corridors of power, even if their reports tended to reflect the concerns and interests of the individual countries that they served. That started to change as the EU (under various names) grew and changed. In the 1980s the British press developed a real streak of Euroscepticism, and journalists in general began to ask more questions than the Eurocrats were used to. Big developments such as the Maastricht Treaty and the expansion into the poorer corners of the former Soviet Empire begged bigger questions. And then there was the euro crisis, and the current wave of popular Euroscepticism that has found a home in almost every corner of the continent. All the while Eurocrats and EU boosters charged that Euroscepticism was something contrived through the practicing of hostile journalism by spiteful editors in thrall to shadowy media tycoons. If only the people of Europe had a fair picture of what they did, they’d say: then they’d fall in behind the European project once again. At least the euro crisis has led to the EU finding its way to the front pages of newspapers, along with a widespread realisation that what goes on within that Brussels Beltway (and in places like Berlin) matters to all its citizens far more than they’d realised. The authors of the book hope that recognition will continue to give the EU, for all its complexity, a legitimate place in Europe’s popular media, worthy of this peculiar set of institutions that has grown to have such an impact in so many parts of daily life. I hope you enjoy the interview! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How those within the Brussels Beltway in the EU institutions must pine for the simple days of the past. Not only was the European project in itself far less contested, but the nature of the journalism surrounding the EU was also far more accommodating. One of the main lessons of John Lloyd and Cristina Marconi‘s fascinating book Reporting the EU: News, Media and the European Institutions (I. B. Tauris, 2014) is how much it has mirrored the evolution of the European project itself. In the first couple of decades the journalists were as likely to be true believers as the Eurocrats in the corridors of power, even if their reports tended to reflect the concerns and interests of the individual countries that they served. That started to change as the EU (under various names) grew and changed. In the 1980s the British press developed a real streak of Euroscepticism, and journalists in general began to ask more questions than the Eurocrats were used to. Big developments such as the Maastricht Treaty and the expansion into the poorer corners of the former Soviet Empire begged bigger questions. And then there was the euro crisis, and the current wave of popular Euroscepticism that has found a home in almost every corner of the continent. All the while Eurocrats and EU boosters charged that Euroscepticism was something contrived through the practicing of hostile journalism by spiteful editors in thrall to shadowy media tycoons. If only the people of Europe had a fair picture of what they did, they'd say: then they'd fall in behind the European project once again. At least the euro crisis has led to the EU finding its way to the front pages of newspapers, along with a widespread realisation that what goes on within that Brussels Beltway (and in places like Berlin) matters to all its citizens far more than they'd realised. The authors of the book hope that recognition will continue to give the EU, for all its complexity, a legitimate place in Europe's popular media, worthy of this peculiar set of institutions that has grown to have such an impact in so many parts of daily life. I hope you enjoy the interview! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How those within the Brussels Beltway in the EU institutions must pine for the simple days of the past. Not only was the European project in itself far less contested, but the nature of the journalism surrounding the EU was also far more accommodating. One of the main lessons of John Lloyd and Cristina Marconi‘s fascinating book Reporting the EU: News, Media and the European Institutions (I. B. Tauris, 2014) is how much it has mirrored the evolution of the European project itself. In the first couple of decades the journalists were as likely to be true believers as the Eurocrats in the corridors of power, even if their reports tended to reflect the concerns and interests of the individual countries that they served. That started to change as the EU (under various names) grew and changed. In the 1980s the British press developed a real streak of Euroscepticism, and journalists in general began to ask more questions than the Eurocrats were used to. Big developments such as the Maastricht Treaty and the expansion into the poorer corners of the former Soviet Empire begged bigger questions. And then there was the euro crisis, and the current wave of popular Euroscepticism that has found a home in almost every corner of the continent. All the while Eurocrats and EU boosters charged that Euroscepticism was something contrived through the practicing of hostile journalism by spiteful editors in thrall to shadowy media tycoons. If only the people of Europe had a fair picture of what they did, they’d say: then they’d fall in behind the European project once again. At least the euro crisis has led to the EU finding its way to the front pages of newspapers, along with a widespread realisation that what goes on within that Brussels Beltway (and in places like Berlin) matters to all its citizens far more than they’d realised. The authors of the book hope that recognition will continue to give the EU, for all its complexity, a legitimate place in Europe’s popular media, worthy of this peculiar set of institutions that has grown to have such an impact in so many parts of daily life. I hope you enjoy the interview! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How those within the Brussels Beltway in the EU institutions must pine for the simple days of the past. Not only was the European project in itself far less contested, but the nature of the journalism surrounding the EU was also far more accommodating. One of the main lessons of John Lloyd and Cristina Marconi‘s fascinating book Reporting the EU: News, Media and the European Institutions (I. B. Tauris, 2014) is how much it has mirrored the evolution of the European project itself. In the first couple of decades the journalists were as likely to be true believers as the Eurocrats in the corridors of power, even if their reports tended to reflect the concerns and interests of the individual countries that they served. That started to change as the EU (under various names) grew and changed. In the 1980s the British press developed a real streak of Euroscepticism, and journalists in general began to ask more questions than the Eurocrats were used to. Big developments such as the Maastricht Treaty and the expansion into the poorer corners of the former Soviet Empire begged bigger questions. And then there was the euro crisis, and the current wave of popular Euroscepticism that has found a home in almost every corner of the continent. All the while Eurocrats and EU boosters charged that Euroscepticism was something contrived through the practicing of hostile journalism by spiteful editors in thrall to shadowy media tycoons. If only the people of Europe had a fair picture of what they did, they’d say: then they’d fall in behind the European project once again. At least the euro crisis has led to the EU finding its way to the front pages of newspapers, along with a widespread realisation that what goes on within that Brussels Beltway (and in places like Berlin) matters to all its citizens far more than they’d realised. The authors of the book hope that recognition will continue to give the EU, for all its complexity, a legitimate place in Europe’s popular media, worthy of this peculiar set of institutions that has grown to have such an impact in so many parts of daily life. I hope you enjoy the interview! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This lecture analyses the growth of euroscepticism, first in the Labour Party after 1979, and then in the Conservative Party: http://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/the-growth-of-euroscepticismThis lecture analyses the growth of euroscepticism, first in the Labour Party after 1979, and then in the Conservative Party culminating in Margaret Thatcher's Bruges speech (1988) and opposition to the Maastricht Treaty of 1992. The relationship remains controversial, leading to the pressures which have led to David Cameron's commitment to further renegotiation and referendum.The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College Website: http://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/the-growth-of-euroscepticismGresham College has been giving free public lectures since 1597. This tradition continues today with all of our five or so public lectures a week being made available for free download from our website. There are currently over 1,500 lectures free to access or download from the website.Website: http://www.gresham.ac.ukTwitter: http://twitter.com/GreshamCollegeFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/greshamcollege

My recap of 1993 continues today with a recollection of some events from the second half of 1993.  I think my space geek is showing just a little -- of the four events I cover here, two are related to NASA and space exploration (the loss of the Mars Observer and the first repair mission for the Hubble Space Telescope).  I also discuss the Battle of Mogadishu (remembered mostly today through the book and film Black Hawk Down) and the Maastricht Treaty, which provided the framework for today's European Union.  The picture at the left is an artist's rendering of the Hubble Space Telescope.

21 years after the signing of the Maastricht Treaty, Britain is trying to cut the cost of the European Union. As the institution comes of age, Gerry Northam asks whether the EU's spending on itself has become excessive and - if so - whether member states do anything about it. In Brussels, hundreds of millions of pounds have been found for projects described by Eurosceptics as "self-aggrandisement". An art deco showpiece is being transformed into a new headquarters for the European Council at a cost of around 300 million Euros (£250m). A further 55 million Euros (£46m) is going to create a House of European History - a museum celebrating European integration. A new 20 million Euros (£17m) visitors' centre at the European Parliament, called the Parlamentarium, has been dismissed as a multimedia tribute to itself. Meanwhile alarm has been raised that money the United Kingdom designates as aid for developing countries is being diverted by Europe to encourage Turkey, Serbia and others to join the Union. MPs claim this money directly disadvantages Britain. Critics say Europe's expansion comes with an unnecessarily large price tag. Are they right? Reporter: Gerry Northam Producer: Chris Doidge.

When one considers the European debt crisis; including the EU Greek bailout, the recent bailout of Ireland, the almost inevitable bail out of Portugal, and with Spain another likely potential for a debt crisis, one may consider the European project in danger. Indeed many are openly stating that the Euro could be finished. The Guardian Newspaper in the UK reported that: "The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, has warned for the first time that her country could abandon the euro if she fails in her contested campaign to establish a new regime for the single currency..." However Simon Derrick, chief currency strategist at Bank of New York Mellon was quoted by the Economist as saying: "Not only do we find it difficult to imagine how a nation could disentangle itself from the single currency... but we also take seriously the fact that the Maastricht Treaty envisioned entry into the euro as being irrevocable" So while it seems unlikely that the Euro or European project will end, it does seem that the European Union is in for a period of vast change - and that is interesting for watchers of Bible Prophecy.