The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Nice Photo Op -- Where's Canada?

Episode Date: March 14, 2023

The leaders of the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia meet in California to discuss how to deal with China in the Pacific.  The pictures of the three standing in front of a nuclear sub were impressive, but is it worth asking "where was Canada?"  And then our regular Tuesday update with Brian Stewart on the war in Ukraine -- is a spring offensive on its way from Ukraine?

And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. You are just moments away from the latest episode of The Bridge. Interesting photo op yesterday by the leaders of three countries on the coast of California. Three countries. Canada was not one of them. We wonder why. And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here in Toronto. It's Tuesday. You know what Tuesday means? It's Ukraine Day. Brian Stewart will be by in a couple of moments' time to talk about the latest developments in the war between Russia and Ukraine. But first, a couple of notes, which I want you to think about today, because we'll probably talk about them in more detail tomorrow on Smoke Mirrors and the Truth, but they're interesting

because there's a kind of common link to these stories, and that link is, like it is on so many things these days, the link is China. So we start off with that photo op I mentioned in the headline. The photo op was in San Diego. Three leaders, the President of the United States, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, and the Prime Minister of Australia.

The backdrop was the harbor in San Diego, and in the background, a nuclear-powered submarine, an American one. And the announcement was basically how the UK and the US were going to help Australia move into the nuclear-powered submarine era. That was the announcement. In the background, though, was the sense that there is a new alliance forming, certainly between those three countries, with concerns in the Pacific about China and how China is exerting its power and influence and domination in some ways.

So some were reading into this that what was actually taking place in that photo op was the beginnings of a new alliance like NATO in the North Atlantic. NATO, of course, Canada's been in since its earliest days and is one of the leading members of NATO. So the question, naturally, is why wasn't Canada in that photo op yesterday? If, in fact, all these possibilities are true about what was happening there. We've got a huge coastline along the Pacific. We have issues, although they've been kind of clouded lately, in our relationship with China.

We don't have any nuclear-powered submarines. In fact, submarines is kind of a dirty word to bring up around Canada because things have not gone well on the submarine front for decades. But why weren't we there? That question's bound to be asked. Parliament's not sitting this week, so it won't be asked there, but I'm sure you're going to hear questions raised somewhere already yesterday. So we'll talk about that tomorrow.

Should we have been in that meeting? Should we be a part of any building alliance? There's lots of discussions going on about Canada's role in the Indo-Pacific. Have we been involved on that level? And if we are, and if we have been, why weren't we there yesterday? have we been involved on that level? And if we are, and if we have been, why weren't we there yesterday? I'm sure somebody will answer that question today. But we'll talk about it tomorrow as well.

The other issue is related on the China front. And not that I need to tell you, but we spent a lot of time in the last week on the bridge talking about the election interference story. And on that front, there was an interesting poll released overnight from the Leger Group, one of the country's leading polling firms, to try to look at basically two questions. Are Canadians concerned about these election interference stories? And if they are concerned, how do they feel about a public inquiry? And if they feel a public inquiry is needed and they are concerned,

does that mean they are concerned about how safe our election system is? Well, once again, we try to have it both ways here. The overwhelming numbers, about 70%, it's a significant majority of Canadians who were contacted, feel the system is sound. They believe Canada's election system is safe. However, at the same time, the majority feel, you know what, there should be a national public inquiry into the questions surrounding the various reports that have come out in the last month that point towards a government

that seemed to know about this early on, or at least the reports suggest they did. What did they do about it? Did they do anything about it? And it will also raise questions about the safety of the system and whether changes need to be made. But as yet, an inquiry hasn't been held, although it hasn't been called for,

although a special rapporteur has been, and we'll see where that leads. As far as we know, nobody has accepted that role yet. They certainly have not announced anybody accepting it. As of the time we were doing this, that may occur any moment. All right. So there's some food for thought, teasing you, I guess, in a way, to be thinking about those two areas.

And we'll pick him up with Bruce tomorrow and see what he thinks about that. All right, Ukraine. There are a number of things happening on the Ukraine front. It seems odd. More than a year in, we can still find things to talk about each week on the Ukraine story, and from every indication I get from you, you want this kind of weekly update on things. And I think you like listening to Brian Stewart as well. A guy with this kind of knowledge

and background and understanding of what happens at a conflict time is helpful for all of us as we try to keep at least one eye on this story as it continues to move along. It can have an enormous impact on our world in terms of what's going to happen when there's a clear understanding of the result of this war. I've had actually a couple of letters,

more than a couple really, of people saying, you know what, we love these Brian Stewart Tuesdays. Maybe you could devote just one of the Tuesdays to getting Brian's thoughts on, well, what happens if the war ends and Ukraine has won? What does that mean? What will be the result of that in terms of European, Europe's future, and the world's future? What will be the impact?

And conversely, what if Russia wins? What will that mean? So I talked to Brian about that, and, you know, we want to do that. It may be as early as next week. We'll devote one show just to that, those two questions, and get a sense on what his take is on the answer to those questions. But today, it's our usual kind of take. What's happening in Ukraine? What's new in Ukraine? And what impact can that have? So let's get to our conversation.

This week's conversation with the foreign correspondent, war correspondent, Brian Stewart. So, Brian, the big talk a couple of weeks ago, or a month ago, I guess now, was the thought that the Russians were going to begin an air offensive. We'd been waiting a year for that. It hasn't happened. And in this last month, there seems to have been attempts for some kind of air offensive, but you don't hear much about it. Well, there was the real dread of the offensive they had from missiles and drones attacking Ukrainian cities and power, especially the power infrastructure of Ukraine. There was a real worry across the West.

You know, how much can Ukraine take of this before it's deindustrialized? It has no real electricity left. And the Russians kept firing more and more. But it looks like that great offensive, which was much more feared in the West than was probably people gave credit to, seems to be petering out. There was a big attack on Thursday, people will know, but that was after three weeks of nothing, nothing coming across. Well, you give your enemy three weeks to repair lines, get in on transistors and do all the power sorting out stuff you have to do, and they can pretty well get things back up and running again, which the Ukrainians were doing. So what it seems like, and we're not talking about the aircraft now, which is a kind of different matter. This is the air offensive to really hit Ukraine industrially and in its whole

lifestyle and infrastructure. What we're seeing is that the Russians simply don't have enough missiles. They've been firing even their best missiles now, the Kh-47 Kinshaw, the hypersonic, very hard, almost impossible to shoot down. They've only got a handful of them. So what they have to do is keep the missiles in a bunch until there's enough to fire, hopefully so many that many will get through. Well, that still gives your enemy time to repair. What we've been seeing is an enormously impressive repair job done by

Ukrainians. They seem to be able to get back up and running no matter how big the blackout is. We've also seen a milder winter, which means people are using a lot less power than was feared at the beginning. There are also a lot fewer people, 8 million Ukrainians have left the country, which is a big relief of the power supply. And above all, the will of the people. This once again proves that air war against a population rarely works. In fact, it usually doesn't work. And you have to have many other elements, including land attack, to make it work. So that's a big, big loss for Russian hopes. They have been using aircraft a bit more of late, by the way,

but always around their fighting in the Eastern Front, not inland any further, because, of course, they fear the growing anti-aircraft strength of the Ukrainians. One of the things that you've mentioned throughout that answer was the ability of the Ukrainians to repair, especially when you were talking about trying to knock out a power grid. I mean, you wouldn't think that would be easy. But it's one thing that's always impressed me about, you know, relatively modern-day warfare is this ability to repair.

I mean, once again, another example, as you and I old fogies like to do, is go back to the Second World War and the much-wanted Dam Busters raid, which was a terrific success in terms of PR and morale building at home in the UK. Partly, by the way, many of those crews were Canadians on the Dam Busters raid. Sure. And while it knocked out a couple of dams,

those dams were plugged and the areas that had been flooded were rebuilt, in a sense, fairly quickly by the Germans, which was pretty impressive on that front as well. Indeed. In fact, at the end of the war, the Americans sent in a lot of economists to study the effect of the air war campaign. Kenneth Galbraith was the leader of it, actually, a famous economist. And they were dumbfounded at how quickly German society had managed to repair itself. Of course, civilians had suffered terribly and buildings were knocked down everywhere.

But the factories were working again. Many of them have gone underground and it just seems to be innate to most humans that under great stress like this they can throw things back together again and repair if they have a kind of clear will to do so all right moving on last week we talked about the battle for back mood and wondering what was going to happen there. What's the update? I mean, it's only a week ago that we were talking about this. Is there an update from the past week?

Well, the only update is it's more of the same. What we've seen is that the Ukrainians have not pulled out as many feared they would or hope they would. Actually, many of the West militaries wanted them to pull out. The Ukrainians have stayed to fight it out. And the Russians have managed to capture a slice of Bakhmut, the eastern slice. They hold eastern now. But they get from the east

to the western part of the city. They have to cross the river, and that's almost impossible under the kind of fire they're taking. So the Russians have been attacking the Wagner group to the north and airborne often to the south, also Wagner. So south and north hoping to encircle the city or break into the main built-up area in the west.

They're making very little progress there because they simply don't really have enough ammunition to break through resilient Ukrainian lines. And they've been using their soldiers as just basically human waves, which are causing incredible casualty rates among the Russians. So it's a meat grinder. Both sides are really, that's what they call it, because both sides are losing large numbers. And basically, both sides are there for one basic reason, to wear down now the opponent, because the opponent's using their best units, wear that down and get some prestige if the Ukrainians can hold or the Russians can capture. And also to tie down above all else,

to keep the best of the best fighting in one area so they can take those troops away from offensives otherwise. So not much change yet. But you look at that city, any city that's been reduced to rubble, it is terribly hard for an army to move through. And the Russians continue to do this pounding and pounding of cities until there's nothing but piles and mountains of rubble. And then they find going into that rubble is very dangerous

because you have snipers, you have mortar crews, you have infantry units hiding all over the place. And you think if anybody should know that, it should be the Russians, given their own history. And, you know, Stalingrad was a case in point. Absolutely perfect example. But, you know, I had a look at the amount of rounds being fired because both sides are complaining they don't have enough ammunition. And actually, it's not World War I or World War II type firing in that particular area. Recently, the Russians fired 157 rounds in one 24-hour period.

Sounds a lot, but that really works out to a little less than seven rounds in an hour. That's not going to crumble a resilient defense that's well dug in. So what they're doing is keep attacking on the ground, like 16 attacks in one day, 24 firefights. That is a grim situation, a very grim battle. But it's not the kind of snap, break them in one go that they probably hoped for months ago. They did hope for months ago.

You know, I'm wary at trying to forecast into the future when we talk about, you know, the expected upcoming offensive from this side or that side. But I'll venture into that territory anyway, because there is talk now of the big spring offensive on the part of the Ukrainians. What do we know about that and and how how sure is it in fact that they they are going to attempt something well it's expected now pretty

much within the next few weeks because they're still in the rainy season now they have to get past that into dry land so armor can move and force across the fields. But, you know, everybody's getting very nervous. It's like opening night nerves, or the eve of D-Day, for instance. Very, very nervous. The Ukrainians are arguing they still need a lot more ammunition and they need more time to train their units. In the West, there's a growing nervousness, wanting to see, and impatience, let's say, to see the Ukrainians break through enemy lines. A worry that maybe they won't be able to do it, because this is a critical question.

It'll be one more if the Ukrainians can break through Russian lines and then start recapturing their lost territories. And a very different war if they can't break through those lines and we get into a state of ongoing siege month after month, possibly year after year. So a lot hanging in the balance here. And one thing that's worrying a fair number of analysts in the West is, you know, all credit to the Ukrainian units, the small units, the companies and the battalion size, that's roughly 500 around that number that have shown enormous adaptability, just what you need. The problem is, just like the Russian army, as you go up the officer rank, you get more into a lot of veterans of the Soviet era who grew up in a very different, you know, mindset, more rigid, less adaptable, very much less flexible.

And there's worry in the West that while Ukraine can fight very brilliantly on small units, will it be able to put together the massive air-land battle concept? That's bringing like a symphony Symphony all your units together infantry artillery armor logistics intelligence into one giant mass that takes enormous it's incredibly complex it's a complexity that civilians much underestimate they don't I think quite grasp just how complex a major military movement is it it's extraordinarily difficult and whether the ukrainians actually have enough of the advanced training in this area is a very big question mark as always in many wars training is that secondary element people underestimate until they realize it's absolutely vital the uk Ukrainians think they're ready. They say they're ready.

But I don't know, there's a lot of nervousness we're picking up around the fields and people coming back from the front. People wondering, you know, these are very deep defenses the Russians have picked. And you know what both the Russians and the Ukrainians really lack? It's mine clearing equipment. No matter how bright the officer, if he doesn't have mine clearing equipment, he's not going to be able to succeed. And maybe that's one element that has been left out of the equation far too long. We're going to see, I think, within the next three, four, five weeks. But it's, boy, there's going to be a lot

of sweaty palms when that comes up wow i hadn't i never thought of it the way you've just described it it really is um it's quite revealing about how how there's no slam dunks in this conflict no um so many things can go wrong which is kind of the tendency of war if If things go wrong, the unexpected happens. But the way that picture that you've just painted is one to keep in mind. Well, it balances out, you know, not all Ukrainian officers are really good officers, great officers. A great many are, but not all of them are. Not all Russian officers are terrible, bad officers. A great

many of them are, but there are also some very good Russian officers who've been working on the defensive now for several months. You know, I learned a lot in covering the Gulf War in 1991 when I saw the Americans put together that massive alliance in the desert, the Saudi Arabia desert, to go in and liberate Kuwait, how complex it was. It took like six months to get ready. And even then, on the eve of the battle, there were nervousness among the Americans. They turned out they wanted it in about 102 hours. But still, the complexity is much greater than civilians, including, I think, the news media ever quite realized. Okay, let's look on the other side of the line from the Ukrainians. And we're looking at the Russian situation, and not from the military, but from the political.

Because our friend Mr. Putin seems to have had a bad run for the last while, and it's not getting any better. What are the major worries for Putin? Well, I think one major worry is his military won't stop fighting amongst themselves. I mean, you have the Wagner group that's increasingly insubordinate, basically saying the army's useless. I'm probably going to be leader of Russia one day, dropping hints that he might one day even run against Putin, hints on the hints. And basically, he's now promising to set up a separate military based around young ideological youth. He's starting to recruit in youth centers and even high schools for a new Wagner Army group, which will be ideologically extreme ultra-nationalist ideologues, young, willing and ready and able to fight. Well, we know historically,

unfortunately, what happens when you put a bunch of ideologues in one uniform thing, you know, Italian black shirts, the German Hitler Youth or SS. And that's the kind of thing that the Wagner group now is kind of contemplating. Well, the military are saying, you know, enough is enough of this nonsense. But at the same time, the military has mutinies on its hands. There's increasing reports from the front of Russians who are seeing horrific casualty raids, seeing very little chance of them surviving this war, basically saying,

calling, starting to call themselves, we're meat. We're nothing but meat. You're trying to send us into a meat grinder, and we're not going to go. And they're mutinying. So the Russians have, you know, bad memories of mutiny on their historical memory, remember, because in 1917, the Russian army mutinied in the First World War, which led directly to the fall of the Tsarist regime and the rise of Bolshevism and then communism. So, I mean, things can happen in a big way when armies mutiny. Let me just question you on that front, too, because one of the things you've taught me over the years is that mutinies don't always mean defeat or the fall of a regime. Mutinies can be a warning signal to them, but they can recover. Oh, that's very true. Well, you know, in the Vietnam War, for instance, there were many units of the American, not many, there were units in the American military often fighting out of camps in the north who basically refused to go on patrol.

They said, we have officers that are just going to get us killed. We're not going to do it. And you don't dare make us. And there was a real hesitation to use a lot of American military units at the last part of that war. I talked to an officer once who was in command of one unit inside that group, and he said he never went into that camp without carrying an M-16 in his hand and having two armed bodyguards at his side. That's how tense the situation was. And of course, the French army mutinied en masse in 1917 because they were tired of being used as

cannon fodder and also denied proper leave. And it was a real warning signal, as you say, to the French army, but it basically put the French military on the sidelines for the rest of that war. And it was Americans and sidelines for the rest of that war. And it was Americans and British Canadians and the rest of it who did most of the last part of the fighting. The French did go on fighting very bravely and on the defensive, I should say. So, I mean, it can be a real warning sign. And I'm sure at some stage in his mentality Putin, the former intelligence officer, must be saying,

what is this telling us? Why are our officers not being able to keep control here? And he's also got problems in his own crim. You'd think, given his past as an intelligence officer, he'd be

able to figure that out. I mean, if he's being shielded from the real information that's taking place on the front lines, then one could understand that. But surely he isn't. I mean, he must be hearing how bad it is for these troops and how many are dying on a daily basis, how many are trying to give up and cross the lines. He must be hearing that.

He must be hearing it, you know. And the other thing is there's signs now of open infighting within the Kremlin itself. I mean, that he's not going to be able to ignore. But there was this bizarre story late last week that a senior foreign office official, Maria Zakharova, was on a panel with a bunch of these mill bloggers, these American blog hosts who are very pro-war, very sort of right wing, who were demanding a much firmer central line from the Kremlin. And she said, no, no, we can't do that anymore. You know, Putin doesn't have the power to insist upon a central information line here. We're not Stalin. We can't do Stalin's kind of role. And the mill bloggers were saying, well, look, can we get at least a clear position here? And of course, the foreign office has since denied that story, which was widely covered in the West,

even though several Russian mill bloggers who were at that panel and reported on it have confirmed that there was a statement by Madame Zakharova. I hope she doesn't live on the top floor of an apartment with windows, given what has happened to so many people who've spoken out in Russia. But credit to her for being forthright on that fact, that underscores the fact that it looks like Putin doesn't have full control there. That seems impossible to imagine. Though I remember,

I can't remember exactly the source, but I remember reading a couple of years ago that Putin once said, you know, everything I order around here, only about 30% ever gets done. I almost fell out of my chair when I read that 30%, and I can't find that source again. It's driving me nuts. But, you know, it's just quite possible that, you know, those in the Kremlin, and there are a lot of people working in the Kremlin, believe me, that's a very big building, as you know. And Moscow is a very big political arena. We'll be asking ourselves, are we starting now to see our leader is weak rather than our leader is powerful? And that has a lot of implications. Yeah, exactly. Just before, I'm going to take a quick break and come back with a last question. But before I do that, almost last question, you were using the

term, was it mill bloggers? Yeah, you probably know it better than I. It's military bloggers. Oh, military. Okay. That's what they call them. These are all these guys. You know, people think there's no open opinion in Moscow.

There's lots of opinion if you're on the right wing. And a lot of it's fighting all the time over why can't we win this war? Why can't we be tougher? Why can't we drop some atom bombs or nuclear weapons, rather? All that kind of stuff is going on all the time, and Putin just seems to sit there listening to it. Okay, quick break, then we'll come back for one last question. Peter Mansbridge here. It's a Tuesday episode with Brian Stewart. We're talking the Ukraine conflict and updating on a number of fronts. You're listening on Sirius XM, Channel 167, Canada Talks,

or on your favorite podcast platform. All right, Brian, the last question, there have been some rumblings around Washington in the last couple of days, really. I guess they've been building for some time, but they've been more evident in the last couple of days that there is a rift developing between Washington and Kiev, between Biden and Zelensky. What do we know about that? I wouldn't call it a riff. I think it's a complex relationship.

And one would expect it would be tense at times. These are both men living under extreme tension and stress at a time of war. But basically, I think it boils down to the fact that Biden feels underappreciated. He has led the world response. He's by far been the biggest benefactor to Ukraine. And, you know, Biden is a man who likes praise, and he doesn't feel he's gotten enough praise from Zelensky. And he doesn't feel at times Zelensky listens to him

very well either. Zelensky, of course, is fighting for the life of his country. And he doesn't appreciate the fact that everything he gets from the United States, he has to ask 15 times first, well, a war is going on. And so they have their disagreements. But I think at heart, Zelensky does appreciate, you know, Biden. And I'm sure most of the time, Biden really appreciates just how great Zelensky's been. But leaders of countries at times of war almost always have fallen. So we tend to think of the Second World War as this wonderful marriage between Churchill and Roosevelt. We'll leave Stalin out of the picture this time. But Churchill and Roosevelt, they notion, it would be much

better to attack in the soft underbelly of Europe. For there was no soft underbelly of Europe. But basically, he didn't want to attack on the western shore of France at that time, because he feared a bloodbath. And he really, remembering the First World War, had great nervous anxiety about it. But they fought for months on that. And Roosevelt didn't appreciate it. He was very angry with Churchill at times, and Churchill was very angry with him. Yet it was probably the most successful partnership in the end that war really has ever seen, given the outcome.

And of course, both of them had their differences with Stalin. And he certainly didn't have much time for them in many ways. So, I mean, you know, wars, I don't find it too surprising, but I wouldn't like to see it get much deeper in terms of irritation, because, you know, Biden's going to be pressed by the Republican right wing that wants him to cut back on Ukraine help. And we don't want to give him any reasons to start being grumpy and perhaps doing it. I don't think he will. The pressure on Biden, of course, is that he, if anything, he would like to have this wrapped up

and ended before an election year of next year, 2024. And this goes back to what I was saying, that there's a lot of nervousness, because if he's been counting on the Ukrainians to be able to break through, and at least make real gains there to force the Russians into a negotiating position of weakness. But if they can't do that, then that puts Biden in an awkward position of supporting an army that doesn't have a chance of a real breakthrough in a war of siege that could run for years. And that is not a situation he wants to go to the American public with, obviously. All right.

We're going to leave it at that for this week. Brian, always great to talk to you. And we will talk again in seven days. So thank you once more. Okay. My pleasure. Thank you. Brian Stewart with us, as he has been on most Tuesdays since the invasion of Ukraine by Russia.

And we, as I just finished saying, we definitely appreciate his thoughts each week and his guidance, really, on a very difficult story at times to follow. Well, we have time for an end bit. We love our end bits. Apparently you do. Sometimes I get more comments on the NBITs than on anything else, which is interesting. This one you'll definitely, you can all identify with at least part of this NBIT today. It comes, as often many NB do come from the New York Times. Just in the last few weeks. But I saved this one because I like it. We've talked many times about the difficulties of falling asleep at night

for some people. You know, they were during the pandemic, people worried about the pandemic, they were stressed out. Generally, people with, you know, stressful jobs have trouble sometimes at night falling asleep. Others look at their phones too much in the final moments before they're trying to get to sleep and their mind is buzzing and the, you know, the light that's emitted from a phone screen

apparently interferes with your sleep patterns, all of that. So what is it you do to try and fall asleep, right? Well, you put aside all the things you shouldn't do. What can you do? Some people listen to those special kind of calming audio tapes or apps that give you the sound of rainwater or what have you. And those apparently work very well for some people. Others take some form of either prescriptive drug or herbal drug to, I guess,

is a herbal drug a phrase or herbal just herbs? I don't know. See, I'm out of my comfort zone on that one. This is different. All right? I've never seen this anywhere before. But it was an article in the New York Times by Grace Linden. She grew up in California. So she kind of got, I guess, a laid back attitude towards different things. But what does she listen to after years of trying to find something that would help her be calm at night and fall asleep? You know what she listens to? She listens to the BBC

shipping forecast. Now, we're lucky. We live in an era where you can pretty well dial up on your phone any radio station or radio service in the world because of the internet. She listens to the BBC shipping forecast, and you say, what the hell is the BBC shipping forecast? Well, let me give you, first of all, a sense of its history. The prototype for the shipping forecast was established after a particularly

nasty storm in 1859. Sorry. 1861. 1859 was when a particularly nasty storm killed hundreds of people and wrecked more than 100 ships in the Irish Sea. In its aftermath, Vice Admiral Robert Fitzroy, founder of the UK's Meteorological Department and originator of the term forecast,

set up a maritime storm warning system in 1861. Predictions were first sent by telegraph. Radio broadcasts followed much later, in 1911, but were interrupted soon thereafter by the onset of World War I. Seven years after the armistice, the BBC sent out its first long-wave transmission of weather shipping from the Air Ministry in London. At some point, the name changed to the Shipping Forecast, and the number of broadcasts per day increased from two to four. Read at 5.20 a.m., 12.01 p.m., 5.54 p.m., and 12.48 a.m. GMT, Greenwich Mean Time.

Each briefing begins with the same words. And now, the shipping forecast, issued by the Met Office. I'm serious. This is a real piece. Now, although each individual transmission has traditionally been short, limited to 380 words at most, and often not more than a minute or two of speech. When heard in hour-long compilations, which they do, the shipping forecast is poetic and hypnotic, a free-form ode to the seas.

Obviously, I'm reading here. I'm reading from Grace Linden's piece in the New York Times. The forecast presents a kind of audio tour. The announcer begins in Viking, a sea area near the Orkney Archipelago. That's north of Scotland, mainland Scotland. Before directing the listener' attention around the British Isles, intoning rhythmic phrases like white, Portland, Biscay, good, occasionally poor, becoming very poor at times in Plymouth, or low southeast Iceland, losing its identity by the same time.

What linguistic splendor resides in these descriptions? What possibilities? I could go on, but I won't. You get the message? You're just listening to a weather forecast, but it's a tour of the British Isles, and it's poetic, And it's rhythmic. That,

apparently, is the secret to falling asleep. All these years, we've been trying to find it, and there it was, right on our telephone. Look up the shipping. Google shipping forecast, or use whatever search engine you use. Get to the shipping forecast. And listen to it. Now, I'm sure we have to the shipping forecast and listen to it.

Now, I'm sure we have our own shipping forecast of some kind out of Halifax or St. John's, and I'm sure I'm bound to hear from people about it. And I'll be pleased to share that with you. But I love that. I love that story. All right. Time to wrap it up. If you haven't fallen asleep yet, time to wrap it up. Tomorrow, Smoke, Mirrors, and the Truth.

Bruce will be by. We'll deal with those two issues. Why weren't we in that photo op? And what does that poll say about us? That we want a public inquiry and yet we think our system is safe. I guess it's that we want to keep it safe. But on the photo op, you know, Joe Biden's going to be here. Is it next week?

It's soon. I wonder if he'll be asked, hey hey why weren't we invited to that or were we invited and we said no i don't know but i think it's an interesting topic nice to talk about and we'll talk about it tomorrow and whatever else is up for grabs. Okay. Thursday, the random ranter joins your turn. And if you have something to say, say it soon.

The man's bridge podcast at gmail.com. The man's bridge podcast at gmail.com. Friday. Good talk with Sean T Hebert and Bruce Anderson. Looking forward to the rest of the week. Hope you are too. I'm Peter Mansbridge. Thanks so much for listening today. Talk to you again in 24 hours.