Lesley Riddoch

Strictly hard work and raw talent behind all the glitz and glamour

For those who like their columnists hard-bitten, cynical and immune from the blandishments of popular culture – even on Christmas Eve – look away now

Until this weekend, my critical credentials were good. I've never bought a lottery ticket, scratch card or premium bond. I've studiously ignored Big Brother, easily bypassed I'm a Celebrity… and cannot debate the impact of Leon's recent X-Factor...For more click here.

Waste, rubbish and earrings

After each Riddoch Questions, we sit down and talk about how the show went and other things just seem to come up. This week we started talking about waste recycling and then detoured. This is the last Aftermath before Christmas and you will enjoy it. Click here to listen to the Aftermath discussion or you can subscribe through iTunes for free !

Listen to what didn't get on the air or couldn't be said...incidentally who will be the first to write a review of this podcast on iTunes ?

Riddoch Questions - Friday 21st December - The Battle of the Bins - Weekly vs Fortnightly

John Crawford believes every Scottish household should have fortnightly not weekly bin collections. Having spent 40 years in the industry, this waste management expert believes there’s no other way to persuade industry to package less, to persuade householders to recycle more and to persuade government that incinerators and landfill are not the answer. But as we approach the time of year which generates more packaging waste than any other, will John convince the public that fortnightly collections WON’T mean overflowing rubbish, bad smells and more vermin. And -- after fortnightly collections saw a change of council control in East Dunbartonshire -- how will he persuade council leaders to back him. And what about reports that some of our carefully separated and recycled rubbish ends up in landfill anyway?

Join the battle of the bins on Friday from 1 o’clock on 0500 92 95 00 or email Lesley@bbc.co.uk and text 80295.

Jesse James

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford was hardly light relief after a week haunted by Donald Trump and the endless saga of his “Putt and Hut” proposals in Aberdeenshire. But pondering the film’s perverse use of labels like hero and coward, (the Coward did after all kill a murderer) I was gripped by the possibility of a Trump-inspired sequel. A Scottish blockbuster with a plot as ambiguous as Jesse James’ real personality and a title as shifting as those special sands near Balmedie.
The Assassination of Donald Trump by the Coward/Hero Martin Ford would have been the straightforward choice three weeks ago…before government intervention prompted The Assassination of Local Planning by the Coward/Hero John Swinney, swiftly followed by The Assassination of Martin Ford by the Cowardly/Heroic Aberdeenshire Council.
Now we have The Attempted Assassination of John Swinney by the Coward/Hero Nicol Stephen. And there’s a week for the plot to thicken further before the festive shutdown.

Martin Ford comments

There were half a dozen articulate and cogent emails which were very critical of the way I handled today’s programme with Martin Ford -- the councillor whose veto blocked the Trump Aberdeenshire Golf proposal until the Scottish government called in the proposal last week and Martin was removed as head of the council’s Infrastructure Committee.

I didn’t have a problem with Martin's concisely expressed motives for voting and acting as he did. But wanted to suggest that his own rational/logical perception couldn’t be the whole story. Indeed the challenging thought is that someone can act with integrity and according to their own reasonable understanding of a structure plan and still produce a decision that creates a furore.

And unless everyone has forgotten, there has been a furore!

My job isn’t to support or oppose Martin’s views. I was trying to make sure he didn’t do what all politicians do, which is to repeat their own perception of events -- however rationally and pleasantly -- over and over again in the face of other political realities. Like the reality that his own Lib Dem colleagues effectively allowed him to removed from office by abstaining and changing the rules so a committee can never have the final say on a big planning issue again. This just doesn’t happen when you are perceived by everyone to have got everything right!

There are other powerful dimensions to this debate -- what best benefits the economy, how to negotiate, whether rejection by a planning committee is universally understood to mean "try again" by developers, why the committee wasn’t even considering approval (it was a choice between deferring or rejecting) and how a committee would know if it had its finger completely off the pulse of public opinion.

I guess the other thing about the format of Riddoch Questions is that we tackle the person who is THERE not the folk who aren’t. If Alex Salmond or George Sorial of the Trump organisation were on the programme today (Sorial was due to come on and cancelled) questions would have focussed on the weaknesses in THEIR arguments. But Martin WAS there, so he was under the spotlight -- maybe that makes this format unnecessarily combative. I don’t know. 

So just to say, I have read and replied to all the critical emails that came in during and after the programme -- and will have a think about them and a re-listen. As ever, let me know what you think

Sentamu takes welcome stand against a tyrant

“And I'm not going to wear a dog collar again, until Mugabe is gone.”
With a well-chosen sentence, a pair of scissors, and a primetime TV slot, the Anglican Archbishop of York, John Sentamu, has refocussed attention on Robert Mugabe in a way that Gordon Brown’s boycott of the Lisbon EU summit has not.

The Bish – as he came to be nick-named during a Poverty Commission six years ago -- became an unlikely Sound-Bite King yesterday (Sunday) when he used an appearance on BBC One’s Andrew Marr Show to cut up his dog collar live on air, pledging not to replace it until the Zimbabwean President was out of office.

Slicing away, he said: "As an Anglican this is what I wear to identify myself. But do you know what Mugabe has done? He's taken his people's identity and literally cut it to pieces.”

It was a symbolic gesture well designed, perfectly presented and utterly timely -- because the Zimbabwe issue and the wider debate about Africa has become as stale as it’s predictable.

This week's Aftermath...Irvine Welsh and Calvin

After the Riddoch Questions programme with Irvine Welsh talking about drink; the mood in the studio was Calvinistic. Technical hitches, definitions of Calvin and drink were the order of the day. Listen in and see what you think. 

Labour needs a change of culture

The astonishing thing about Wendy Alexander's predicament is that the dodgy donation was given - and received - for nothing. For no purpose whatsoever.

Click here to read the full article.

Tired old thinking landed Labour in this dodgy-donations mire

If there is no such thing as bad publicity then Jersey , Silverburn Shopping Centre, and Combined Property Services should be quietly chuckling. Thanks to GreenGate and AbrahamsAlley, low profile companies, obscure people, and distant places have been hitting the headlines. And yet as we drown in small details with large consequences, one important question has not been asked.

Why?

The Riddoch Questions Aftermath podcast

After each Riddoch Questions, the production crew, guests and this week, visiting Napier University students sit down and pick over the programme that's just been. This week, the subject of Scottish politics, St Andrew's Day are discussed by this feisty bunch and Priscilla has an interesting take on the robustness of political debate.Click here to listen to the Aftermath discussion or you can subscribe through iTunes for free !

Listen to what didn't get on the air or couldn't be said...incidentally who will be the first to write a review of this podcast on iTunes ?