The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - For Russia, Desperate Times Mean Desperate Measures

Episode Date: October 25, 2022

Brian Stewart's regular Tuesday commentary looks at Russia's latest battlefield decisions that show an invader in a combination of retreat and brutal attack. But first some thoughts on what the CBC might learn from the BBC's assessment of where it is after 100 years. And an end bit you will find interesting, and maybe rewarding!

And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. You are just moments away from the latest episode of The Bridge. It's Tuesday, that means Brian Stewart. It also means some thoughts on the BBC turning 100 and what that could mean for the CBC. And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. Brian Stewart's going to be joining us in a few minutes' time with his regular Tuesday commentary on the situation in Ukraine and what the latest developments mean. It's a pretty good discussion today with Brian, as they always are, of course. But I want to start on something else.

The BBC turns 100 this year, and in its own thoughtful way, it's discussing what that means, what the 100 years have mean. It's looking back at some of its past glories. It's also marking some of its past blunders. But it's a big public institution in the United Kingdom. It means a lot, not only to listeners there, but around the world with the BBC World Service. But there are challenges that the BBC is facing right now.

And some of those challenges are similar to what the CBC is facing in Canada. So it's worth looking at seeing what the Beeb is saying about itself. And I found in the last couple of days a column by Amal Rajan he's a media editor for the BBC and he's written a piece good piece titled five challenges the BBC faces as it turns a hundred and you know it looks back briefly to when the BBC was founded back in 1922 when it started its first broadcasting the first general manager was a fellow by the name of Lord Reith who'd been a veteran of World War I who was shot in the face actually but he believed the BBC was really important, that it had the national interest at heart.

He was a Scottish engineer in post-war London. He wanted to deploy the latest technology to rebuild a country ravaged by war. Now, today, few people would suggest, as our friend, the media editor Amol Rajan writes, few people would suggest building a public media institution. Fewer still would fund it through a license fee, seen by some as a tax on households. And yet, as the plaudits for its coverage of the death of Queen Elizabeth II demonstrate,

the BBC often remains world class. And that's true. You know, they don't always knock it out of the park in broadcast, but they certainly do on special occasions and special ceremonial occasions. And we witnessed that recently with the passing of Queen Elizabeth II. The BBC mandate is similar to the mandate of the CBC. Not exactly the same, but similar. It has a much bigger budget.

Its budget is around 5 billion pounds a year. That's about $8 billion in Canadian dollars. The CBC is in the sort of 1 to 1.3 billion range, which is a hell of a lot of money. But it's nothing like the BBC gets on a per capita basis. You know, the British population isn't quite double what Canada's is. They basically operate in one time zone, and for the most part in one language, which is not what we do in Canada with the CBC, which is operating on numerous time zones in numerous languages,

but a much smaller budget. But this isn't about budgets. This is about the basic challenges that are facing the BBC right now, according to Amal Rajan. And I see some similarities. You know what his number one challenge is for the BBC? And I take some pride in mentioning this because I talk about it often, and so do you. The number one challenge facing the BBC according to Amal Rajan is trust. He writes trust is easily destroyed but not easily

created. Frequent scandals have eroded the public's trust in the BBC and this is the age of disinformation in a world where lies spread faster than truth. The belief that accuracy is sacred has diminished. Social media has been catastrophic for the news trade. You know, as the ranter said, was it last week or the week before? It's reached the point where Twitter is the news, and the news is Twitter. That's not a good place to be. Rajan says,

this is an opportunity for some journalists to spend time, money, and effort ascertaining the truth, something most people still believe in. But declining trust is a threat to the BBC. People won't pay for something they don't trust. The CBC can learn from that and should learn from that and I believe is learning from that. Cost. With direct competitors valued in the hundreds of billions such as Netflix and Disney, the BBC will struggle. Its funding is capped at around five billion dollars. Now, everything's relative, as I said. That looks like a pretty good number to the CBC,

that kind of per capita funding. The BBC is obliged to do stuff they don't do. News, radio, religious programming. It's tightly regulated and comes under relentless political pressure. Sound familiar? Streaming services have also driven up staff and programming costs. Excuse me. Ultimately, the BBC will have to do less, which means it will have to work out what it can do that others can't. Reaching young people. Man, have I heard this for the last 50 years at the CBC. And it's the same at the BBC. We have to reach younger.

A younger audience, whether it's radio or television, we have to reach younger online as well. There's a stark generational divide in consumption of BBC content, says Rajan. Britain's aged between 16 and 24 spend more time on TikTok alone than watching broadcast television. In the past decade, the amount of time they spend watching terrestrial television has fallen by two-thirds.

The BBC's worst nightmare, and this is the same for the CBC, is irrelevance. Universal appeal. That's the other challenge. The fourth challenge. The issue is universality. To retain the license fee, the BBC must appeal to all, or at least as close to all as possible. That's why its leadership is prioritized,

restoring the BBC's fragile reputation for impartiality. Politics. The BBC has always infuriated governments, of all hues. Today, there are two big differences. First, the hostility from government is much more relentless, thanks in part to social media and today's culture wars. I can draw parallels to that for the CBC. Second, the BBC's most committed enemies can use the streaming revolution to make their case by saying

the license fee is no longer fit for purpose. Brits have to contribute money annually for a license fee if they have a television in their house. And that's where the BBC gets money. Anyway, this is just portions of this article. You can find it quite easily on the BBC website. But it's really good. And here's how it concludes. Remember we talked about Lord Reith, the man, the first general manager of the BBC?

Well, as he knew, and as he said in 1922, quality, not quantity, is the BBC's best hope. You can say that about the CBC too. Now, obviously, I'm a great believer in public broadcasting. I'm a great believer in the CBC. Do I always agree with the decisions made by the CBC management? I didn't when I was there, and I don't now. And that's healthy. There should be active discussion, criticism, and debate

around the decisions made by your public broadcaster. It's your money. So, there you go. A little starter on what's happening at the BBC and maybe what the CBC should be thinking because they're not that far away from their 100th anniversary, which will come in the early 30s, the early 2030s. So, there you go.

And if you have a thought and let's put it this way if there was one thing that you would do about the CBC one thing send me a note the Mansbridge podcast

at gmail.com the Mansbridge podcast at gmail.com. The Mansbridge Podcast at gmail.com. Send it today. Send it no later than tomorrow. And it'll make your turn for this week. You know, many of them will make your turn for this week. But send it along. And, you know, I don't want a whole essay from each of you.

But if you'd said, you know, there are many things I'd like to do to the CBC, here's one, bang, and say it. That address some of those issues, trust and cost and, you know, how they deal with the political agenda. I have no problem with being attacked by politicians, and they shouldn't have a problem with us discussing politics in this country. Us being the media in general and CBC in particular. And it's not just news and information.

It's comedy. Hey, the most cutting stuff about politics in Britain comes on the comedy shows. And it can be vicious. Remember Rick Mercer's rants on the Rick Mercer show? He used to have a field day. And it was good. It was

important. It was healthy to have those kind of discussions and rants, even when they're disguised in a way by comedy. All right. Drop me a note. The Mansbridge Podcast at gmail.com. The Mansbridge Podcast at gmail.com.

Okay, it's Tuesday, and I know you Ukraine buffs are out there going, what's Brian Stewart going to say today? What are the issues that he's got? Well, a couple of them, and we'll start with them, I think, are questions that you sent in last week for Brian, a couple of them. And then we'll get into the bigger story of what's unfolding right now in Ukraine. Brian, of course, if you didn't know already, and many of you know this, Brian was a longtime foreign correspondent for the CBC.

He covered all kinds of conflicts in different parts of the world, natural disasters in different parts of the world. But he understands the military and the military mind, and he understands what happens when countries get into a war. He's been there. He's seen it. He's felt it. He's smelled it.

So this is a man who talks from knowledge. All right. Let's get at it with Brian Stewart. Well, Brian, let's start with a couple of letters that we got last week, and I mentioned them on your turn last week. And they're good questions from listeners who are avid Brian Stewart fans. This fellow, Dean Bradley, writes, my questions for you and your very knowledgeable bud, Brian Stewart. Now, what that actually means is the's for you. We go to the knowledgeable

one for the answers. Here's the question. Who manufactures all of the tanks, guns, rockets, bullets, etc. for both sides? Are these companies, corporations working overtime to keep the supply chains running or are countries going through their own supplies? What happens if or when these supplies are depleted or if supply chains cannot keep up with demand? These are all good questions, and clearly they're the kind of questions that I hadn't thought of, and I'm glad Dean did. Is there an answer that you've got for us on that?

Well, it's a very good question. In fact, there are a lot of different questions inside it, all of them very important. Yes, private industry, by and large, are producing the great weapons for this industrialized war. opposite. Most of the weapons being sent into Ukraine from allies throughout NATO and now increasingly just EU, the European Union, basically come from the stockpiles of the military. And they're starting to complain to governments, look, we can't give any more of these rockets, these missiles, these tanks, these armored cars. At least we can't give too much more because we're starting to run lower than we want to, we feel comfortable with, should we be faced with a war. So they're starting

to say back to government, look, start producing more weapons to send to Ukraine and stop robbing from our stockpiles. And the governments, by and large, are trying to do that. The problem is with arm manufacturing today is that it's extremely technical. And therefore, when you order a new line of, say, tanks or armored personnel carriers or any aircraft missiles, it's very high tech. And these companies all reply on suppliers who are also high tech. So to get an order actually going is extremely difficult. It takes a long time. You may say we want to get more HIMARS, these long range mobile rocket systems that the Americans have that are so good. We want to get more in, but it may take, you know, nine more months or 15 more months or

whatever to produce another crop of them. Churchill once said of armament manufacturing generally in war that it always begins with a little trickle, then it becomes a modest little stream. In the third year, it becomes a torrent. And that's the problem. It takes a long time to start up. There's one classic example that Ukraine right now desperately needs anti-aircraft missiles. The United States has a company that wants to turn out these brilliant new missiles that will be very effective for Ukraine. It promised they would come within months. It's still dealing with a contract with these companies because here's the problem.

Companies say, look, we're not that interested in sudden boom and bust contracts. We want long-term commitments. We have a labor shortage. We have to bring in a lot of workers and we have to go to our suppliers. We need contracts that are going to say, we need 10 years worth

or we need at least five years worth of this weapons. We don't want to deal with contracts that are going to say, we need 10 years worth, or we need at least five years worth of this weapons. We don't want to deal with contracts that say, give us six months of quick turnout, because that's not profitable for us. And in fact, disrupts our whole system. That's an explanation of why there is this shortage looming, and why it's so serious, and why governments are going to have to tackle it with more energy than they have been so far. Here's another question that came in over the last week, and it's from Alan Mendez from Vancouver. Regarding the Canadian military, I think Canada should implement some kind of mandatory conscription for 18 plus similar to what sweden implemented in 2017 in addition to helping getting the population in a better position to defend canada it may also help us

or future generations come together by having a shared experience i read this on your turn last week and i offered up my explanation which is canada doesn't have a great history on on the conscription issue, but I'm sure you can take it deeper than that in your answer. Well, that was, for Canada, a very good answer, because there's no way you could bring in military conscription in Canada, just not on, for all the historical reasons you refer to, including a very strong hostility in Quebec. But here is something that is becoming very interesting in the dialogue

or the becoming debate over this subject. In Europe, it's becoming widespread now, reference to going back to a form of conscription, but it's a very, very different conscription. It's now not military service, it's a very, very different conscription. It's now not military service. It's civic service. And what it is envisaging, France has adopted one several years ago that seems to be fairly popular, is you have a service that is some youth, 18 and a half and up, have to serve in a lottery system, which means you don't have the rich get off by going to university. Everybody does their service. serve in a lottery system, which means you don't have the rich get off by going to university.

Everybody does their service, and it's boys and girls, men and women, are brought in, which makes it gender neutral. But the key thing is, it's short. It's for one to two months, and it's very voluntary on the kind of service they do. Some may want to go on for a few months military service because it interests them, but most of them will have the option of doing civic duties, aid to the emergency powers in a disaster, a flood, a fire, a snowstorm in Canada, say. They will learn things like first aid up to a paramedic level. They will learn how to handle crowds in, again, another emergency or how to help elderly people join, say, a plague system. So you'll be turning out a general flow of young people who have all these talents that will be very useful in various emergencies. But also they get that very important experience of mingling people from all sectors of society, rich, poor, middle, you name it, come together. Ethnically and culturally, they come together. And it's a way to kind of enhance

a nation's feeling of how important these integration of all these factors are and how important patriotism is. Canada may not go for it. It's very expensive. The military don't really want to be involved in it, I believe, but it'll be an interesting debate, and I think it should be something that is debated. Okay. We're going to take a quick break here because we're going to shift focus now to the conflict in Ukraine and a couple of the key issues that seem to be playing out right now. We've got Brian's take on that. But first, this. And welcome back.

You're listening to The Bridge on Sirius XM, Channel 167. Canada Talks, or you're listening on your favorite podcast platform. Either way, we're happy to have you with us. Brian Stewart is the regular Tuesday guest as we talk Ukraine and things military. And Brian is with us still. So let's deal with a couple of the big issues that are kind of running the timetable here right now on the Ukraine story that we're focusing on. But clearly there's some confusion around what exactly is happening. The issue of Kersan, the apparent scramble of Russia to pull out of a large portion of the Kersan district, which is west of the Dnipro River, previously declared part of Russia. So this seemed like a bit of a surprise. They just declared it as part of Russia.

Now they're pulling out of it. The big question is, can the Russians retreat in good order or will it turn into another route like we recently saw on the northeast front so give us your thoughts on that well there's a lot of very heavy fighting there now the movement is fairly slow but it could become much faster in in coming days and then certainly a few weeks it does look like the uh ukrainians or the russian military have won their argument with Putin that they have to pull out of this chunk of Kersan west of the river or north of the river, as you want to see it, into the larger section of Kersan to the east of it. Because basically, they can't stand there. They don't have supply lines coming in, especially since that bridge connecting Crimea and Russia was taken out by that explosion. They're not getting enough supplies to keep their

forces up to speed. Their forces aren't performing all that well. So they want to pull out at least what could be 5,000 or 10,000 Russians before they get completely surrounded by the Ukrainians. They're fighting a rearguard action, which is one of the toughest actions to ever fight in a war. In other words, you want to retreat from an area, but you have to do it in some kind of order. Otherwise, it becomes, as you suggested, a rout. And this is one of the big questions now. Will it be a retreat that's managed well, or will it become a rout? And the big question there is, are the Russians putting in some of their top units, their better units, to fight as the rearguard force?

Or in fact, are they pulling them out for future fights and leaving behind the very poor, weaker troops, the poor draftees and the rest of it that have been crumbling one after the other. The Ukrainians are still probing as much as they can and getting all the intelligence and to know which. That will decide how fast or slow this fight will become. Because if it's the key units, the fight's going to be a lot tougher. If it's weak units, I think the Ukrainians then will turn on the speed and will head for kerson city which they they want to capture but not without a big fight they'll speed that up significantly uh just to keep in mind when the russians and if they

saying they do pull all their forces out of that part of herson, and the Ukrainians take over, it will be another horrific loss for Putin, a face, and that's going to have major political impact. One of the things that happens when you're trying to pull out of an area, and as you said, stop the advancing troops from coming in, one of the possibilities, and we witnessed it in our history books when we read about 44, 45, and the Canadian troops trying to get into the Netherlands, the Germans blew all the dikes, flooded the land, made advance really difficult.

There is a dam in that region of Ukraine that if the Russians chose to blow, that could cause big problems. Gigantic problems. That's the Novokahoska Dam. And I apologize to all Ukrainians for my awful pronunciation, but that's a very large dam, the Dnipro River, that holds back enough water that if it was ever let loose, would swamp up to 80 cities and towns and

cause enormous casualties uh it would just do a devastating uh impact on a lot of hair saw itself and it's very similar to what the german if they did that that would be similar to what the germans did in the netherlands canadians should remember should remember when the Canadian Liberating Army was moving in, the Germans blew the dams. It's flooded a vast part of the Netherlands, causing a major famine and also slowing down the Canadian and British advance into the Netherlands. If they do that, and the Ukrainians are warning the world that they might be, in fact, ready to blow it, it would be an enormous war crime. I think it would cause a massive outcry because the damage done and possibly even the loss of life would rival that of a tactical nuclear weapon. And I don't thinkussia actually will do it not only would it cause the world outcry but it would cut off water supply to a nearby nuclear plant which would have to be shut down and would also cut off fresh water supply to crimea their own area so i i think it's a ukrainian

threat um but it's definitely something to keep an eye on because this is how desperate the fight for hair song could become overall and remember once the ukrainians take the west bank they've still got a base fighting on the east bank on their move towards crimea uh there's there's a second um i guess you got to call it an offensive that the russians are are conducting against Ukraine that seems to be having some, you know, putting Ukraine into real difficulty in terms of giving power, electricity to its people. And that's the nightly bombardment of Ukrainian power supplies, fuel dumps, and the cities itself.

Talk to me about that and the impact that's having. Well, it's having a dramatic effect on the electrical supply. I think up to 40% of stations are down. I'm by no means an expert on how to repair, but repairs are going on. But it's going to mean over a cold winter coming on, some very dark and miserable periods for the Ukrainians. And it is a very serious attack. Most of the missiles and drones that are sent in are shot down, up to 85% of them are shot down, but enough are hitting the electrical targets and that that is really causing

punishing blackouts, but also some are hitting civilian areas, causing a steady drone of civilian casualties, deaths, and then terrible injuries. Having said that, one has to underscore the fact that it will have almost no impact on the morale of Ukraine. They found out throughout history of World War, whether it's to World War War two or whether it's Vietnam or elsewhere that bombing civilians does not usually crack the morale of civilians almost never does and the fighting goes on and the civilians of anything often turn more towards hatred and animosity and determination to keep going one astonishing story that isn't being given perhaps enough coverages which proves the morale of ukrainians to an amazing degree over 7.2 million uh ukrainians left cities and the towns

when the war began as they as the migrants they moved to the west of Ukraine to get away refugees or they moved to Europe and the rest of the world. I think several million moved outside of Ukraine altogether. Since then, 5.2 million have simply returned. 5.2 million have come back, most of them from the west of Ukraine, where they thought they were living in safer areas. They want to go home. 1.2 million Ukrainians have said, thanks very much outside world for sheltering us, but we want to go back to Ukraine. We want to go back to Kiev and Kharkiv. We want to go back to our cities. That's where we feel we belong. There are reasons why some can't come back because they have children, for instance, and they don't feel it

would be safe for children. But there's been a huge tide it reminds one somewhat those stories of london when the war began in 1939 children were sent out of london to the countryside and many brits in fact set sail for north america or went to the northern parts of the country and many of them came back and most of the children in fact were brought back because it's very hard to be a refugee when a war goes on. It's hard to be a refugee all the time. But some of the people coming back saying, you know, it was very difficult living with the status of being a refugee. One woman wrote very movingly, we thought about return all the time. You live permanently in a state

where you want to go home. And then she got home and went to Kharkiv and has been under missile attacks and drone attacks. The air raid siren's going every night. And she said to somebody, it is so strange. You like feeling brave. You appreciate every day here with strength and love. It's a kind of emotional coming back to one's country that is in peril that I think most of us can, at some level, imagine how great that would be. attack run by Putin and his unbrutal general, Sergei Serovkin, who has a notorious reputation for bombing and blasting artillery fire against civilian areas and hospitals in places like Libya, sorry, Syria, where he made a specialty of knocking out hospitals. They seem to be doing it more for the domestic population in Russia. Look, Russians, this is what we're doing. We're really making the Ukrainians pay. But some analysts say, okay, that's okay up to a point, but it doesn't explain why you're doing such a self-defeating attack because the rest of the world is increasingly horrified europe

has become even more mobilized to support ukraine since these bombings go out every night on air and are covered so widely why are you doing it okay you're you're showing your hard line you can be hard but one analyst concluded and i think he's right here, I think Putin and Sorovkin are doing it because it makes them feel better. They literally are the kind of bully thug who, they feel better when they're really hurting somebody and hurting anybody who sort of stands up for them. And it's a sorry state of, if that's their military strategy, boy, they've got some real messes going on. I'll say. And they'll be called to account for it when this is all over, whenever that may be. It is certainly a war crime.

And whether they'll ever be brought to trial is unlikely. But certainly, I think charges will be laid and their reputations will be sullied for the rest of time and modern history at least um let me ask you one question because it seems like every week at some point in our discussions we draw parallels to uh things that happen in the second world war and and i'm wondering do we do that because you know that's part of our part of our history that especially you and i have studied a lot of and and we you know we read a lot about second world war events but is this war in many ways like the conflict in the second world war or is it just war um i think that you first put the finger on it uh as one of the military analysts said some

many weeks ago that this was the first industrialized war since 1945 consider the kind of wars we've we've grown up with indo-china then vietnam or french and algeria brit British colonial wars, they've all been of a limited nature of war, they call it. Even Iraq and Afghanistan became more counterterrorism wars than real war. But this is the war of giant battalions and divisions basically forming up against each other and has fought on the kind of scale that you have to go back sometimes to World War II to really see the enormity of the decisions being made and the massiveness of the the actual movements being undertaken so there are many more examples in the Second World War about Ukraine Russell world Russell Ukraine war than there are in the more other modern wars that tended to be much more limited in nature. This is not very limited in nature at all.

This is an all-out conventional or industrial war involving a good part of the world in one way or another, in support of or in horror of. One last question. Many Canadians will recall that there used to be a channel on their television called RT, which was, it was a Russian channel in English. Very much propaganda channel, extreme propaganda. And basically it was kicked off the Canadian

channels. You couldn't, I don't think you can get it anymore anywhere in Canada. But RT still exists and it anymore anywhere in Canada. Um, but RT still exists and it still pumps out stuff, propaganda, and it's getting more and more bizarre, more and more racist.

And it's a, it's a, it's approach to covering this story, the war in Ukraine. Um, with one startling example of that just in the last little while. Talk about that. Well, yeah, RT is certainly the propaganda channel for what is still an imperial government.

Russia is basically an imperialism that looks out upon the world, but it's often surrounded by inferior people. And they have commentators on there one commentator on this week is just appalled uh the europeans when they when they saw a specific summit who talked about um certain children in certain parts of ukraine what he would do with them rather than bring them home to russia to put in orphanages and turn into good Russians, he just drowned them in a river. They weren't worth saving. They should just be drowned. It was almost his humorous appeal to genocide. And another commentator who was on, even more racist with him, if you can believe it,

was talking about why would the Russians ever want to move into western Ukraine anyways. You know, no woman there would be worthy of, I hate to say this word, rape even. He talked in such blunt terms, the kind of stuff that would have any network thrown off the air in North America or anywhere else in Europe is turning a poison like that, that is just hard to believe at times.

No, not all people on RT by any means are like that, that is just hard to believe at times. No, not all people on RT, by any means, are like that. But they seem capable of putting on, at times, people that belong, really, in the 1930s, at the height of racist arrogance and warmongering. That's where they really belong, hardly in our modern times. And I think the Canadian government, though it was criticized by some at the time, probably did the right thing in just kicking it right out in terms of service here, because it is beyond the pale in terms of racism, obnoxious imperialism, and anti-feminism as well. What does it say to you that it's come to this? Because that wouldn't happen by accident, and it wouldn't be allowed to continue by accident. There's a reason that's going on.

Well, I think one of the big reasons is, and remember, it was quite a big supporter of Trump a few years back. One of the big reasons is that a lot of Putin's main support now is on the right, the really hardline right, Russian nationalist or imperialist force that wants to see the Russian empire restored to its full glory as they see it. And it is really right wing to an extreme, most extreme degree. And I think they're catering to this crowd. They want to keep it on side as much as possible by having its own voice put out there over the Russian airways. It is hair-raising, but there you are.

I mean, this is what a lot of the propaganda within that Russian imperialist nationalist extreme right wing is these days. All right, well, we're going to leave it on that uh on that note as discussing uh as it is uh that story um brian as always we thank you for your your insight and your your understanding of what is at times an extremely confusing story you make it easier for us to try and understand it. So thank you. Okay, Peter, my pleasure. There you go, Brian Stewart with his commentary for this week on the bridge,

his take on what's happening on the Ukraine conflict. This has been a very popular segment for our program for the last six, seven months, ever since Brian joined us with his Tuesday column. And there's a reason for that. His insight has been ahead of the game in many cases in terms of other reporting on the Ukraine situation. Now, he has the luxury of being able to step back from the moment, which so many journalists are trying to deal with, especially those on the ground in Ukraine. He has the luxury of stepping back using his expertise,

his understanding, his knowledge, his experience, and his constant reading of the situation to help us better understand things. We've got an end bit for today. I love the end bits. I love these little bits of information that come along that are useful to a degree. I assume that many of the listeners to this podcast have been involved in the

technological advances for smartphones for the last 20, 25 years. I know back in Stratford, I have a box full of old phones that I've had over these years. And I have the, you know, it's either the original or the second original BlackBerry, because they sent one to me. And I can remember using it on the air and how astonished we all were. That was when BlackBerrys, before they were phones, they were email transmitters, and it just seemed like wild. You could actually hold in your hand and send an email.

I used it on air, I think, for a couple of town halls. Anyway, I have the box of all the various Blackberries in the, I don't know, there's got to be like 10 or 15 in that box. Just sitting there. I was not an iPhone guy. I resisted iPhones when Steve Jobs came out with the first one, I think it was 2007. But let me tell you you if we were smart we would have

bought a few of those original iphones either some called it the iphone one some called it the iphone two some called it just the original iphone but if we'd been smart we would have bought one of those or bought a couple of them and never opened them, kept them in the original package. Just listen to this. 15 years after it launched, I'm reading from a piece on Sky News in the United Kingdom. 15 years after it launched at a starting price of $499, that's US. 269 pounds at the time.

An unopened version of Apple's original handset, also known unofficially as the iPhone 2G, the iPhone 1, or original iPhone, has sold at auction. Now, what do you think it sold for? That's unopened, still in its sealed box. Take a guess. You can guess in U.S. dollars, Canadian dollars, or British pounds.

I'll take all correct answers. Well, here's the answer to the question. That phone that originally was at US $499 sold at auction for $39,339. That's just under 35,000 pounds and I don't know, somewhere in the low 40,000s of dollars in Canadian dollars.

Probably around 45,000 of dollars in Canadian dollars. Probably around $45,000. Right? Should we have bought those, stored them, kept them, and said, I'll sell that in 2022. You watch how much money I get for it. Well, things have changed since that original iPhone, right? The original iPhone couldn't take a selfie It only had one camera and it only looked one way

Now it's got multiple cameras It's got way more pixels And all those other things And And we go Wow, how do we ever live without these That's going to wrap her up for this day On the bridge So, wow, how do we ever live without these? That's going to wrap her up for this day on the bridge.

Tomorrow, Smoke Mirrors and the Truth with Bruce Anderson. Thursday, your turn and the ranter for your turn. I suggested earlier in this episode today that if you've got thoughts on the CBC, one thought that you would do, and it could be anywhere from shutting it down, defunding it, or to more constructive, hopefully, ideas on how CBC could respond to the challenges of its time. Or maybe you think, hey, it's perfectly all right the way it is don't change a thing whatever let me know the mansbridge podcast at gmail.com the mansbridge podcast at gmail.com those letters and anything else you might want to write about i'll look at them all and some of them will make it onto the air on thursday, the random renter will be back.

You know what? I don't know what he's going to do this week. So he must be plotting out there, ranting away. Talk to you tomorrow. I'm Peter Mansbridge. Thanks for listening. See you again in 24 hours.