Off Air... with Jane and Fi - Oh I'm not discreet at all

Episode Date: April 27, 2023

Jane continues to fear for the end of world but its not over yet.... we've got a podcast episode to do! Jane and Fi run you through some top radio jargon, Jane heavily 'trails' next week and a man called Terry is trying to stay with Jane and Fi.Plus they’re joined by Emma Sky OBE, an expert on conflict, reconciliation and stability, who has worked mainly in the Middle East, to pick her big brains.If you want to contact the show to ask a question and get involved in the conversation then please email us: [e-mail] Producer: Eve SalusburyTimes Radio Producer: Rosie Cutler Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

VoiceOver describes what's happening on your iPhone screen. VoiceOver on. Settings. So you can navigate it just by listening. Books. Contacts. Calendar. Double tap to open. Breakfast with Anna from 10 to 11. And get on with your day. Accessibility. There's more to iPhone. Right.

Eve's given me a magnificent opportunity to start the podcast without Jane. So here goes. Anne from Nottingham, aged 59 and three quarters. Very good evening. Good morning. Good night, good afternoon. Don't know what time you listen. Anne says, I really enjoy the podcast and hopefully once I'm retired later this year, I will have time to enjoy the live show too.

Lots to look forward to there, Anne. And Anne says, following on from listeners' requests for you to share the book recommendations in a written form, how's about setting up an instagram account titled jane and fee reads or something similar where you or one of your lovely assistants could post the book titles with authors at the end of each week no don't let her in no don't no i've seen that little face seen that little desperate face i've started i'm halfway through.

This would be easier to scroll through than the info given for each podcast, I think. Anne goes on to say, keep up the good work on tackling the subjects that others shy away from, like AstroTurf. The views of you both and your listeners always give me food for thought. Lovely email, Anne, and we will take that on board and actually only today in the office.

We had a little bit of an Instagram tuition thing, didn't we? We did. From our younger assistants. And we were talking about exactly that because I know it's a bit hard. If you're listening to a podcast, you don't always want to stop and write things down. So we will do something on the Insta.

And we were also considering the possibility of having a little book club. A book club? Are we whispering in case? I don't know. So considering the possibility of having a little book club. A book club? Are we whispering in case? I don't know. The Chinese state is tuning in. And somebody might nick the idea, Jane,

because there are no book clubs out there. There's never been one of those before. No celebrity book clubs at all. Well, this wouldn't be a celebrity book club, would it? In all fairness. No, it would be sub-celebrity. All that reminds me, I thought you were trying to be a little salacious on the radio show when you said I'd been in a hotel in Mayfair with Nicholas Soames. But fair enough, I had been.

It's factual. It is factual, but everybody knew what you were getting at. Those days are gone, as you know. And it was to do an interview uh for for times radio and but it was in a hotel i don't know whether i could name it or not do you think i could name it probably would it be okay anyway it was called the beaumont hotel and it was very very close to selfridges although our producer had a worse sense of direction than me. And it took us about an hour and a half to find it,

even though if we just started from Selfridges. I know it's like the old Irish joke about how do you get to Dublin? Well, I wouldn't start from here. But it really was very close to the place. Anyway, it doesn't matter. It was an amazing art deco. I mean, you'd be amazed here, I don't go into luxury London hotels. And this really did have, I thought it was a very classy establishment.

I've been there and I'd entirely agree. They've got one of the most beautiful bars, one of those proper dark, kind of anything could happen here. Anything could happen. And anything has happened here already. But you'll never find out about it because we're very discreet yes i'm sure you are uh well no i'm not but oh sorry am i meant to be discreet sorry i missed that one completely i'm not discreet at all i'll tell you anything just ask uh only back to the book club for a second yes how would you feel if we did a kind of a give and take book club

where we read readers' suggestions, not just us saying this is what you should read? Yes, we could give that a go. Although I have to say that's the reason I'm not in a book club. Oh, OK, this is where it all falls apart. Why aren't you in a book club? Because I was going to say, I suppose I don't like being told what to read,

but often we are. We're given a load of books every week and told, go home and read them. So that doesn't stand up, does it? No. No. OK. I'll forget that then. So I think it would be interesting. And we're also making plans to, because we've sort of fallen out of love with Twitter, I think it's fair to say.

Is that fair to say, or are you going to go back on it? I might go back on it, but not really properly invested in it. So I might just have it to scroll through and look. But I'm much more interested in Instagram. And let's face it, most of the stuff that I've tweeted over the last year has just been pictures of my pets. So I'd be better on the Insta anyway. You would be.

I don't want to join in a political debate because it just goes so wrong. And so many people feel like that. It's such a shame because it's not the, you know, what does Elon Musk claim it would go back to being? The town square for the world? Well, it's not. It's someone having a wee at two o'clock in the morning in the town square most of the time.

Yes. I just want to go a single day in my life without hearing that man's name. Impossible. Perhaps tomorrow will be that day. You're right, it is difficult. Hello to Lisa. She is another of our listeners in the States. And I just, I love this email really because it begins,

I usually listen when I take my donkeys for their afternoon walk. Oh, not another one of those. It's just, it's brilliant. She goes on to say, US politics are a mystery to most people. I have liberal values. I live in Vermont, close geographically and philosophically to Canada. And the US is generally a pretty horrifying place to live.

I tried and failed to move to Canada, she says. So that suggests that something went pear-shaped there, Lisa. And I'd like to know what it was when you tried and failed to move to Canada. Have you ever thought about living abroad? No. Okay. This is an email from Livia.

Well, have you? Yeah, I tried it. Oh, of course you did. You went to the States. I went to New York and I couldn't find my mojo. This one comes from Livia who says, Hello again. Yes, please. We'd love more radio jargon terminology. It's fascinating. I couldn't find my mojo. This one comes to Olivia, who says, hello again.

Yes, please. We'd love more radio jargon terminology. It's fascinating. Olivia says, what's the name of the infomercial type thing that you do? Advertising, but in your own voices. And as though you were really chatting about it, it catches me out every time. Well, that is called a host read. That's a host read, yes. Can you explain these other radio terms, please?

Here we go. Donuts. called a host read that's a host read yes can you explain these other radio terms please here we go donuts oh donuts are where the presenter speaks then often to a correspondent and then there's a bit of audio and then we go back to the presenter excellent a bounce around a bounce around lots of different people all talking on the same subject uh yeah i think specifically that's where uh you would go to our correspondent in Wales, who'd throw to our correspondent in Scotland. Oh, you're quite right. Who'd throw to our correspondent in the Midlands. So it's a self-contained bounce around.

Yes, yeah. Beds. Beds, music that are usually used as we go up to the hour. Up to the hour. As we say, yeah. Jingles. Well, that's easy. It's branding on the station, isn't it?

Hard quarterways. Hard quarterways. A firm commitment to go to an ad break or to read the news headlines at approximately 15 minutes past the hour. Have we ever managed it? And then again at half the hour. And then, no. It'll be a while yet. And pests. I don't know what be a while yet. And pests.

Don't know what a pest is. They're pests. Men we've worked with who are pests. Gosh, she had me there. I like this one from Terry. I'm Terry and I would like to make inquiries for five single room accommodations for 15 days. Give me your best price for these dates within the month of August.

Terry wants to check in on August the 15th. Annie wants to check out on August the 30th. Can you help him? It's quite a long stay. It's two weeks. I mean, I'm not sure if we've got all of those dates available. What do you reckon? Well, I've just had my spare room decorated,

so I could probably do something for Terry, but not for a whole fortnight. So the funny thing is, Terry sent it to the wrong email. Yeah, well, do you think? So he needs to go back to inquiries at Glenmahur, but he's blind copied us in, and that's the weird thing, isn't it? Maybe we're meant to go with him.

Do you know him? I'm not going to answer that. Right, this is another one from one of our lovely correspondents on the northeast of Scotland. Greetings from Brechin, says Shona. And she wanted to join in the conversation

that we were having about trying to have an open conversation with teenagers and young people about sex and sexuality. And Shona says there is a perception in some quarters that discussing these very sensitive matters somehow strips children and young people of their innocence. And of course no one wants to believe that their child is among those who've accessed porn at a young age.

But whether we like it or not porn is insidious and whether they've seen it or not children are aware of that world so please could we treat our sons and daughters with the respect they deserve remind them that you should only touch someone if it's for the other person's pleasure with their consent and with an understanding of boundaries and talk to them about what a rare privilege it is to share somebody's intimate space and what they can do to protect that vulnerability and of course always with a healthy dose of if something feels wrong on either side then it is wrong and has to stop. On a slightly different but related subject says Shona I have to say that I come by this honestly as I was speaking to my octogenarian

mum and dad last year, they live abroad and dad died in October. In amongst the normal chit-chat they told me they'd stumbled across a quirky British comedy on telly, Sex Education. I suggested that it maybe wasn't aimed at their well-experienced generation. Mum, ever the teacher, said that once she got over the first ten minutes, she could see that it would be a huge benefit for young people and then said, and you're never too old to learn. To which my father retorted, yes, but you can be too old to care. Lovely, Shona. All good wishes to you.

Very good. Thank you very much for that. And here's one that we both liked. Headline, You Divorced Parents Are So Lucky. I don't need to mention the name. I divorced ten years ago when my children were two and four, says our correspondent. I had some challenging years and I was very grateful for the support along the way of my friends.

That said, I also truly believe that solo parenting has had many definite positives and, amongst other things, has rewarded me with a better connection with my children, a view their dad would share, I'm sure. And I think that's interesting, and I do think it probably applies in my case and, indeed, probably my ex-husband's case as well. Five years ago, I met my now partner, and I feel very lucky to have met a kind and compassionate man,

and we've been enjoying building a life together. I say enjoying, but this includes navigating relationships with our ex-partners, financial constraints and obligations with ex-partners, trying to share our time amongst our four children. He has two of a similar age to mine, attempting to blend the families together at appropriate points and to appropriate levels,

supporting him through the death of his mother and finding ways to support my mother as she gets older. To be told then by one of my closest friends who's witnessed all of this, that she and her husband often look at the free weekends us divorced parents enjoy and think that perhaps they too should get divorced so they can roam carefree every other weekend. It makes me both sad and enraged, says our correspondent. I've dismissed it before as a casual throwaway line, but I've realised that she's been drip feeding this nonsense every time I've seen her for a couple of years. Okay, what do you think about that? I think that's probably not that unusual, I imagine.

I don't think it's unusual at all. Do you think you've had that from any of your friends i can't remember it actually to be fair uh but i suppose there is that notion that maybe you do have a free pass on this every other weekend thing of course we should say that at the very beginning that every other weekend thing it's actually quite torturous. I find it very, very strange time. Yeah. Even now, nearly eight years on, I feel giddy and sad at the same time. And it's not hugely enjoyable time, actually.

For me, it turns into get lots of things done time, which I can see if you don't have lots of free time and you're constantly with somebody, maybe envy that. But there's nothing to be envied in anybody else's life, really. If there is, then make the changes and go and live that life. I don't think it's fair to... Of course you're right, you shouldn't envy anybody else's life, but who could honestly say they don't? Well, I don't think that I would be...

OK, serious point. I don't think that I would negate the pain and discomfort and disorientation of divorce in favour of, ooh, let's go to Selfridges and have lunch. I don't think I would be as daft as to do that, actually. So I'm annoyed with that

person's friend. Okay, well, thanks to the person who knows who she is for emailing, and perhaps other people will have a view on it. Yes, yep. And also, I can see that if you're in a difficult relationship, that there is something to be envied about people who have been released from difficult relationships.

Or if you just want to get a shot of your kids for a weekend. Yeah, I understand that. But I think to kind of say you're having a better time is a bit weird. Yeah, it is a bit weird. We should say that on the subject of the approaching apocalypse, which by the way may not be approaching, let's try to be positive. Fee was right yesterday to point to the fact that I am mildly obsessed

with it, but I think that crucial five years between us is the difference here. I really do believe that. Is it because you can remember the Bay of Pigs? I can't remember. No, that's very cruel. I can't remember the Bay of Pigs. Eve, who's producing again today, would you like to give us your... No, she doesn't have any idea what we're talking about,

and that's fair enough, because she's 22. Is that right? 24. 24. Apologise. So what do you think... It's a good point. What do you think... What have you witnessed that has informed your sense of doom

in those five years, which would have been from when you wouldn't be able to remember stuff in 1965 but what was happening in kind of 67 68 oh no no nothing that i remember then i don't remember that i'm just talking about really the 70s and the 1980s when i was you know a slightly gloomy already news obsessive individual who could see the end coming and to be fair, I wasn't the only one who was I mean, what about Frankie Goes to Hollywood? Two Tribes

all of that stuff, there were lots of songs written about what looked like it was going to be our fate turned out not to be, at least not so far, but anyway, next week we have finally got a hold of Julie McDowell host of the podcast Atomic Hobo and the author

of a book I've just finished called Attack Warning Red and Julie is going to be, I think she's going to be properly interesting and you'll like her because she's Scottish Oh, lovely I know you've always got a soft spot for the Scots and she has just written this extraordinary book about,

it's a social history really, about the plans that the government was obliged to do back in the 1970s and 80s. So do you actually sometimes get properly fearful that the world is going to end? I don't think think I think it's odd the degree to which we seem to have stopped panicking about it.

It can't only be me and Julie who are worried about this. No, I think all those strange letterboxes along rural highways in America off-grid would suggest that some people have taken precautions already. What are they?

Well, you know, the people who really believe that they make themselves safer by living miles and miles away from communities, not dependent on any electricity or gas. You know, they're off, aren't they? And they can be quite doom laden people. Well, we should say Julie McDowell's on our programme next week. We have what I would call a very spicy stew of contributors

in our big interview slot next week. So, Monday's guest is Alex Jones. Not the ghastly American conspiracy theorist. No, but Alex Jones, chirpy Welsh lady. So she was brilliant. We talked about everything from her husband's depression

through to the latest thing she bought on Instagram. She was wonderful, wasn't she? Yeah, you can hear her on Bank Holiday Monday. I think she's a good guest for a bank holiday. Tuesday, Nicholas Soames, very good friend of the King and grandson of Winston Churchill. He can drop a few names and he did. did. And on Wednesday, it's, if I'm going to say, Julie McDowell, author of Attack Warning Red, which is that social history book about how the government prepared for nuclear war in the 1980s. And then on Thursday, it is Philippa Gregory, a historian, writer, and someone who I think will properly prepare us for the big, big events of the weekend. And Livia, that's what's known in the profession

as a very long trail. Well, it was quite long. Emma Skye, I did. No, it's good to know. It's good to know. Emma Skye has been at the table. This is our big guest now. Emma Skye has been at the table for some of the most important conversations of modern geopolitics. She's advised the US government on its policy in Iraq and Jerusalem and has also advised NATO in Afghanistan. She graduated from Oxford, went to work for the British Council. And although she was opposed to the Iraq war, she ended up working for the Coalition Provisional Authority and became the Governorate Coordinator of Kirkuk for a year. And don't worry, in the interview, we do ask her about that title, Governorate Coordinator of Kirkuk for a year. And don't worry, in the interview, we do ask her about that title, Governor-Eight Coordinator of Kirkuk. We began by discussing a recent piece that she had written about being back in Tel Aviv and joining marches against Benjamin Netanyahu's reform. And we asked

her, first of all, if she thought we were witnessing real change in that country. Well, thank you. I mean, I was back in Israel last month, and it was extraordinary to participate in these demonstrations, because the last time I'd been on a demonstration in Tel Aviv was when Yitzhak Rabin had been assassinated. So it was bringing back lots of those memories. The demonstrations this time seem to be different. This time, there really is concern about the nature of the government, the Israeli government. And I think what Israel is witnessing is a real change in demographics. The majority used to be secular Jews, and there is no longer a particular group that is an absolute majority.

And so you see the rise of national religious Jews, ultra-Orthodox, as well as the Arab population. And Netanyahu's government is a very right-wing government that includes elements in it which really want to annex the West Bank and take full control of the land from the sea right across to the Jordan River. So it does seem an existential situation for Israel. What type of state will it be? Can it maintain a Jewish majority? Or if it annexes the West Bank with its Palestinian population, the Jews will become a minority in the land, ruling over an Arab majority population? What do you think will happen? I mean,

if we were to spool forward in time, and let's just say randomly, you know, the three of us gathered again in a year's time. What do you think Israel would look like then? I was really interested in your piece, actually, Emma, because you noted that there were so many more middle class protesters out on the streets feeling a real offence at the direction that Netanyahu had taken some of the reforms. Yes, there's a sense of offence over weakening the power of the judiciary. The judiciary has been seen as quite an activist judiciary inside Israel. And in the country, you have more and more right-wing governments being elected into power and not being able to implement their policies. The judiciary is seen as blocking that. So I think there is going to be

a long contest in Israel. This doesn't just sort of get fixed overnight. This is an ongoing struggle. But when, you know, this is not something, this has been brewing for a very, very long time, because at the end of the day, it really does come back to the occupation of the West Bank. That is a fundamental issue. And in the protests at the moment, they're really focusing on the judicial reforms. But the next stage really has to be a discussion on where are the borders of Israel and what will be done with the West Bank. The West Bank is supposed to be the site of, you know, the two states. It was supposed to be a state for Israel living alongside a state for Palestine. But more and more Jewish settlers have moved to live inside the West Bank, making it much harder to see how a two-state solution will ever come into fruition. So you hear more and more people now talk about a one-state solution. But will that

one state be equal rights for all citizens? Or will it be, you know, Palestinians in the West Bank not having equal rights? So this really is a contest for the future of Israel as a democratic state and as a Jewish state. What led you to become so interested in the region? I went to work in Israel when I took a gap year after I left school. So I spent my first experience there was on a kibbutz. And then when I went, I studied at Oxford and I was supposed to study classics, but the first intifada broke out. And I thought, I really want to study the Middle East. I want to study Arabic and Hebrew and the culture and the histories and try and be somebody who helps mediate and find a solution to conflicts in the region. So I was a young idealistic person who fell in love with the Middle East, and really

wanted to help sort of broker peace in the Middle East. And how do you look back on that youthful optimism and confidence? It was a different era. You know, when I was a student, it was a different era you know when i was a student it was the end of the cold war the berlin wall came down apartheid ended in south africa mandela was released from jail it was this era when people felt that all the problems of the world were going to be resolved and the middle east peace process started up so I moved out there to live in Jerusalem, working with Israelis and Palestinians, helping broker people to people interactions, also helping to build up the institutions of the Palestinian Authority. five or ten years before a Palestinian state would come into existence. So I think the 1990s was a unique period. It was a period when democracies were on the rise, when problems were being resolved. We saw the end of the troubles in Northern Ireland. It was a very hopeful time, and there were new sort of United Nations norms of responsibility to protect,

setting up of the International Criminal Court. It was a very positive era. It's good to remember that, isn't it, that that sense of progress felt really intoxicating, because I think especially to a younger generation, it's hard to imagine, you know, where that kind of confidence of exporting our own sense of values might have come from. Can you tell us a little bit about the British Council, Emma, because you went to work for the British Council after graduating. And Jane and I were just wondering exactly how far its remit goes, what it genuinely achieves and what you would have done within it. So the British Council back in the 1990s was a much bigger organisation than it is today.

And it was all about, you know, creating valued partners for the United Kingdom. It was building trust. It was spreading goodwill. And all over the world, for many people, their first interaction with the UK came through the British Council they might have studied English at the British Council they might have gone on a scholarship to the UK that the British Council had organized they might have been on a project that was funded by the World Bank or the European Union or the British government that was actually implemented by the British Council. So it was kind of the cultural wing, but the people-to-people wing, if you like, of the British government. And it's really been cut down. So its number of offices have decreased, the number of people working for it have decreased. And it's much more focused now on arts and English language.

So it has a smaller remit than it had at the time when I was working for it. And is that a good thing? I don't think it's a good thing, but I think, you know, the world has changed. The internet means that interactions come more easily, I suppose, over the internet. But I think the British Council was that, you know, it brought the best of Britain to other countries. It allowed plays and sports and all these other sort of connections to be forged. of connections to be forged. And friendships came from that. Lots of new creative ideas came out of that. So it was a very, it was the soft and cuddly arm of Britain, arms length from the British government, and really fostering relations and trust all around the world. Yeah, some people would say that the soft and cuddly arm of the British, and particularly the British reputation abroad has been well and truly

curtailed at the moment. As I mentioned in our introduction, Emma, you ended up working for the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq, even though you were opposed to the invasion, and you became this Governorate Coordinator of Kirkook. I mean, I think you probably need to explain the title to us and exactly what the job was and how you ended up doing that. So I was very much against the Iraq war, like most people in the UK. And I really wanted to go and do something. You know, do you spend your time as an armchair critic saying this is terrible? Or do you try and go out and do something? Do you spend your time as an armchair critic saying this is terrible, or do you try and go out and do something on the ground? So I didn't want the only international,

the only foreigner that Iraqis met to be a soldier with a gun. I wanted them to see, you know, there were lots of people who really cared for them and wanted to help them rebuild their country. So when, after the invasion, the British government sent out an email asking for volunteers to go out to Iraq to administer the country for three months, they said, before we hand it back to the Iraqis. So after all my experience in Israel and Palestine, I thought I've got some useful skills. I'll go out and I'll try apologizing to everyone and helping them rebuild their country but I didn't know what my job was going to be there was no I didn't apply for a specific job they just asked

for volunteers so the only message I really got from the foreign office was find your way to RAF Bryce Norton get on a British military plane get to Basra where you'll be met by someone holding a sign with your name on it and taken to the nearest hotel and everything will be clear. Okay. And let's just fall back in that sentence a tiny bit, Emma. You wanted to go and apologise to people. Was the British government aware that they were putting somebody on a plane who was going to get off at the other end and say, I'm sorry about all this? I don't think that's something that people worried about. They were just looking for people with, you know,

who would want to go and work in Iraq. There weren't many people who wanted to go and work in Iraq. And I was actually someone who had some relevant skills. So it wasn't like there was any in-depth interview vetting process. They just asked for volunteers and, you know, they got volunteers. It sounds a bit ad hoc. Tell us about being governor at coordinator. I mean, what does that term mean?

Is that right up at the top of the pile? So I wandered around the country, you know, trying to find out what do they want me to do. And in Baghdad, they said they've got enough people, try the north. So I went around the north. I went to Mosul. They had somebody.

I got to Kirkuk. And when I got to Kirkuk, I I was told it was the government coordinator, which really meant like the acting governor, the senior civilian, reporting directly to Ambassador Bremer, who was the head of the Coalition Provisional Authority. Voice over describes what's happening on your iPhone screen. Voice over on settings. So you can navigate it just by listening.

Books, contacts, calendar, double tap to open. Breakfast with Anna from 10 to 11. And get on with your day. Accessibility. There's more to iPhone. it's jane garvey and fee glover here and we're talking to emma sky conflict reconciliation and stability expert and author of several books the latest one called in a time of monsters travel through a middle east revolution emma take us back to that time when you were only, what, in your mid-30s and you're out there in Iraq and you are mixing in very high circles. At one point, I think you were giving reconciliation advice to General Petraeus.

What's it like in the room as a young woman, presumably not surrounded by other young women at all? So in these rooms, it would be US military, all men, and a general at the head of the table, General Odierno or General Petraeus. And what they try and do is get as much information as they can on which to make their decisions. So in these rooms, if you can imagine, you've got people who will be from intelligence, people who work in civil affairs, people who are working on the ground combating insurgents. All of these people are given a voice at the table. And the generals will often listen to the brief and ask questions and keep asking questions so they are as informed as

they can be before making a decision. And what do you think is lost in negotiations or that kind of level of discussions if there isn't a balance of gender around the table? Is it still naive to think that the values of family and children are only brought to that table by women? You know, with negotiations, negotiations can take place at many different levels. And at one level, it's a negotiation to try and stop violence. And that often means trade-offs. It means deals being done. So the sort of negotiations that we were doing would be, if we release this particular person out of jail, can this person guarantee that there will then be a ceasefire in this area as a result? So there are a lot of

trade-offs being made in these sorts of decisions. I think often what happens is these negotiations are done between elites. You get elite pacts, and they may lead to temporary agreements. But for long-term implementation, you have got to have all society brought into it. And it's there where women play a key role in upholding the social fabric, but ensuring that young men don't go back to violence, upholding the social fabric, but ensuring that young men don't go back to violence, ensuring peace within their communities. But these negotiations are always fraught with difficulty. And often when you're in the room, you're not aware of all the things that are going on outside the room. So you're always working with limited information and trying to make the best decisions based on the information that you have at that moment. What do you think now, looking back on that time, were the real missed opportunities? We know we should never have invaded Iraq in the first place. It was based on

intelligence that proved to be faulty, that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. So the legitimacy of the intervention was always questioned. That having said, there were mistakes made following the intervention. The attempts to try and create a democracy in Iraq led to the coalition dismissing what had been there before. So rather than working with what was there in society, they dismissed the Ba'ath Party, they dismissed all the security forces. And this unintentionally collapsed the state, which led to the civil war. But then from period of 2007 to 2009, that period that we call the surge, the US had the right vision, the right

strategy, the right leadership, the right resources. And that helped bring the civil war to an end. So I saw, you know, international forces at their best and at their worst, I got to see the full gambit or the full remit while I was in Iraq. So if we can learn any lessons from what has happened in Iraq and also from what has happened in Afghanistan. What do you think this country's policy towards both of those countries and also towards Iran should be at the moment? And I'm aware that I've asked you a massive question there with two and a half minutes on the clock, Emma. You know, first of all, we have to understand the limitations of our power. These countries, you know, these countries belong to the people of those countries who've got their dreams, they've got their aspirations. And it's being aware of what it is we can influence and what it is that we can't influence.

I think with Iraq, after everything that Iraq has been through, there is the potential for a long term relationship between Iraq and the UK, Iraq and the US. Iraq is not anti-Western. Iraq has great human capital. It has great potential. Unfortunately, it still has a political system which is quite kleptocratic, which means that the aspirations of young people in the country keep being thwarted. Afghanistan, I think it was tragic the way that the US and NATO left Afghanistan, because there wasn't a government that was able of holding power. And quickly, everything was taken over by the Taliban again. But, you know, international relations are getting more and more complicated. We no longer live in a, you know, American-led world, in a unipolar world. We're now moving into this period where the old order is contested. It's contested by Russia, China, by the global South. So we've gone from unipolar now

really into a multipolar world. I don't think it would just be bipolar America and China, who's seeing all of these other poles. So it's becoming increasingly complicated, and it makes it harder to have influence. And it makes it even more important to work with allies and to have common policies policies and not just bilateral policies, but building up regional policies with allies to approach a particular issue. I'm so sorry that we've run out of time. Just in a couple of seconds. What does Emma Skye do of a weekend? How does Emma go crazy? Well, I've got two new fads. One is playing tennis and the other is pottery.

So I spend a lot of time cycling, walking, tennis and making pots. How are the pots going? Room for improvement. Emma Skye, who is a reconciliation expert and all round geopolitical big brain, Jane. Yes, she really was. She's a woman who I think has a great deal to offer and is now at Yale being allowed to keep on offering it to young minds who will definitely benefit. I really love what she said about the 1990s because it's a decade that I think now we look back on with a certain sense of shame, actually.

I think there were a lot of decisions taken in the 1990s that had huge repercussions for the rest of the world that we're still feeling now. But also just as our kind of personal experience of it, it was a weird decade, wasn't it? It was meant to be female empowerment, but I don't think it really was. I think it was quite a lot of, you know, loaded magazine

and everything being on display, and I'm not sure about it. But I love what she said about that feeling that there was this intoxicating progress. For a time, it did feel like anything was possible. Yeah, and they were big things that were being... But maybe we're due another of those decades. It would be nice to think that. I mean, you know, with regards to your doom-laden heads,

we're probably completely opposite. And I probably wake up in the morning thinking, more daisies are coming. That might not be very realistic. My garden is looking good at the moment. I mean, I say that as someone who doesn't really know what's in her garden, but what I can see, it's very colourful. That's brought it to life, hasn't it? Certainly. I don't know why I didn't get that job on Garden as well.

Be Dalmonte. I just wanted to mention this because we can do this kind of thing now. This is from Sasha. Hello, Sasha. She's in Perth in Australia. And Sasha's just talking about audiobooks, and she agreed with me. She never thought she'd get into them, and I've been really quite evangelical about how wonderful and soothing they can be.

You'll never guess which book she's listened to on audiobook. Jane, what has she chosen? She only, only chose our book. You're kidding. I know. So what a wonderful opportunity just to remind everybody that Did I Say That Out Loud is available on Audible and indeed other audiobook platforms.

Do your perceptive observation of what people then ask us when we say it's on audiobook too. Yeah, people used to say, well, who's read it? And I'd think, well, who do you bloody think? Yeah, it's us, I'm afraid. Yeah. Because we quite rate ourselves in that department. Nobody else does.

Anyway. I think next time round, if we ever rate another book together, I think I'd like it to be read by... Who would you pick? Ryan Reynolds and Dustin Hoffman. You can be Ryan. I'll be Dustin. I'd like whichever one of the Chuckle Brothers is still alive.

Nope. Nope. Nope. And that well-known scouser, Lulu. Lulu. Yeah, that'd be excellent Well done for getting to the end of another episode of Off Air with Jane Garvey and Fee Glover Our Times Radio producer is

Rosie Cutler and the podcast executive producer is Henry Tribe Thank you for joining us and we hope you can join us again on Off Air very soon. Don't be so silly. Money to bank. I know, lady. A lady listener. I'm sorry. what's happening on your iPhone screen. Voice over on settings. So you can navigate it just by listening. Books, contacts, calendar, double tap to open. Breakfast with Anna from 10 to 11. And get on with your day.

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