Scottish Independence Podcasts

ISP climate change discussion with Dr Keith Baker

We are grateful to the Independence for Scotland Party (ISP) for sharing the meeting of their climate change group with guest speaker Dr Keith Baker, expert in fuel poverty, energy policy and built environment asset management. Keith is also a member of Commonweal's energy working group.
Topics covered in this discussion include:
1. Energy Performance Certificates
2. Using real time data
3. Geothermal heating
4. The National Energy Company
5. District Heating Systems
6. Ground Source Heat Pumps
7. Property Energy Efficiency Targets
8. Incineration plants
9. Smart Meters
10. Hydrogen as fuel

Indy Jigsaw Podcast - Oct 21

Welcome to the Indy Jigsaw Podcast, a monthly selection of the best clips from indylive.radio's weekly politics show,  building up the picture of an Independent Scotland piece by piece.
This episode features Lesley Riddoch, James Hawes, Dr Philippa Whitford, Tony Guiliani, Lorna Slater, John Swinney, Joanna Cherry and George Kerevan.
You can catch the Indy Jigsaw weekly radio show at Noon on Tuesdays on Indylive.radio and there are video versions of many of the clips on Indylive.radio's Youtube channel in the Indy Jigsaw Playlist 
 

The Big Indy Debate

Organised by the Edinburgh Yes Hub, the Big Indy Debate took place at the Queens Hall in Edinburgh on 21st September.  It was an excellent evening's entertainment with music and satire as well as debate.  
The core of the event was a debate panel chaired by Lesley Riddoch.  Panel members were Robin McAlpine from Commonweal, Colin Fox from SSP, Michelle Thomson SNP MSP, Gillian Mackay Scottish Green MSP, Selma Rahman Edinburgh WFI and Mike Small from Bella Caledonia.
This podcast focuses on the questions for the panel and their answers.
The whole event is available to view on Independence Live's Youtube channel.  
 

TNT Show. Ep 70. Dr James Hawes, novelist, historian & latest ‘The England Delusion‘

Novelist and popular historian who has also written screen adaptations for two of his works. "'Speak for England' foreshadowed Farage, May and Brexit with such unnerving accuracy it deserves some kind of prescience prize" (Observer 23.4.2017).
 

Commonweal policy podcast ep 102 : Media Matters

This week, Craig talks to David Patrick, author of recently published book Front-Page Scotland which looks at how stories about Scottish independence were reported in the newspapers throughout the 2014 independence referendum campaign. They discuss how the framing of stories on topics such as economics depended largely on whether the points favoured one side of the campaign or the other, which topics were given a disproportionate amount of time in coverage and which people and personalities saw more coverage than others. Finally, they discuss lessons to be learned from the last campaign that could be applied now such as how activists can better examine news stories to assess if the issues are being reported fairly.

The UK Government‘s Green Savings Bond

The Green Savings Bond.
There are a whole host of ways that a government can take to encourage a shift to a greener economy. The Green Savings Bond, the latest idea from the Westminster Government, is not one of them.  Over the summer UK Chancellor Rishi Sunak announced a plan to direct £15B of funding towards green projects to help decarbonize the UK economy. 
To achieve this he has chosen the good old Bond market, but with a wee twist, rather than using the traditional bond market where institutional investors look to hedge their riskier investments, by buying risk-free bonds from the government, he is after the publics’ savings. 
In the most basic terms, the Green Savings Bond scheme will direct some of the great British public’s savings towards green projects. 
So we have the headline: £15B of funding towards green projects. Sounds good, doesn’t it?
But we all know never to believe the headline. 
That £15B of funding towards green projects is across two years and will only be invested if the great British public chooses to hand that amount over to the government; there is no government top-up. 
So this headline figure is a maximum figure: it could, of course, be much smaller, and considering the callosum mismanagement of public funds during the pandemic by the conservative administration, I expect they will fall well short of that figure. 
To really understand the lameness of this initiative we have to delve a bit deeper into Bonds and the Bond market.
https://scotonomics.scot

SNP conference - Nicola Sturgeon Speech

Nicola Sturgeon's speech from the SNPs virtual conference Sept 2021

Alba inaugural conference - Alex Salmond‘s speech

The weekend of 11th Sept saw two party conferences.  Here is the closing speech from Alex Salmond at the Alba conference held at Greenock Town Hall.