The Scotsman Bulletin Thursday July 25 2024 #BinStrike
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00:00Hello, and welcome to the Scotsman's Daily Video Bulletin for this Thursday. My name's
00:12Dale Miller. I'm Head of News at The Scotsman, and I'm joined by our Deputy Political Editor,
00:17David Bowle. David, there is plenty to get back into. It's meant to be recess, but it
00:23feels just as busy as always. And let's have a look at the front page of today's paper
00:28first, because it's leaning on your story, Shell Denies U-Turn on Green Power Revolution.
00:35Now, David, I'm going to throw over to you and the set to talk through this story. But
00:41we've also got some other keys to our coverage on the front there. The Olympics, in case
00:46you didn't realise, actually started on Wednesday with some of the initial football matches
00:50and other events, but it will crank up properly from Friday with the opening ceremony. And
00:56then we're into it. You can read about all the Scottish athletes, when they're competing,
01:00what times, in what events, at scotsman.com. It's something to get very excited about
01:07over the next couple of weeks. David, Shell and GB Energy, we still don't know a location
01:13for the GB Energy base, but this story around Shell's fascinating, I think. Can you talk
01:19us through it?
01:20Yeah, I mean, so Shell and all the oil and gas joints really have been sort of focusing
01:26their efforts on renewables. They've been promising a lot of their investment to be
01:30switched from fossil fuels to renewables, because that's kind of the direction of travel.
01:35We're going to run out of fossil fuels and governments are making it very much clear
01:40that we need to bump up renewables. But there's been some reports this week that Shell is
01:46maybe going to turn us back on a couple of those sort of floating winds projects that
01:51it won for the North Sea. They have denied this and said, well, they haven't denied it.
01:56They've kind of said, we won't comment on these cases. They've denied that they are
02:00turning their back on the sort of the green energy part of their business. But in other
02:05parts of the North Sea, in this sort of the Dutch North Sea, they have kind of sold on
02:09their sort of floating projects. And it comes at a time where Labour are trying to obviously
02:14ramp up renewables in the North Sea. They've launched today their GB energy plans. As you
02:22said, we still don't know where it's going to be headquartered other than in Scotland.
02:25We're told we'll find out very soon. It's very, I'm very confused why we don't know this yet.
02:32But Labour put a lot of money into this, 8.3 billion into setting up this public energy
02:38company. But when you've got companies like Shell being a bit on the fence about whether
02:44to invest in renewables, and Labour and all governments have basically made it very clear
02:49that this doesn't work without private investment. The companies themselves need to put the money
02:53forward. And without some of that, and the bit of speculation that maybe the companies don't
02:59see it as a particularly good investment. It does sort of throw into doubt some of those plans from
03:04Labour, considering they are so ambitious to try and ramp up our sort of use of renewables and move
03:10ourselves away from fossil fuels. And you can read the Scotsman's position on this potential
03:18story as well at Scotsman.com. Just go to the opinion tab. David, I wanted to talk to you about
03:24waste strikes or bin strikes, as most people will know them by. You've been following this
03:31throughout the week. And maybe we might have a breakthrough coming over the next couple of days.
03:36It all depends on talks, doesn't it? Yeah, I mean, we may do. There's a chance. But it's going
03:41to take the Scottish government to actually involve themselves. And so far, they've shown
03:46very sort of reluctance to do so, basically saying it's a matter for the unions and the councils to
03:53sort out. But this has kind of been rambling on for a little while now. The pay deal that's been
04:00offered to local government workers has just been seen as not good enough by the unions and
04:06the workers. It doesn't match the deal down south. We also had Rachel Reeves at the weekend
04:12sort of hint that Labour would be open to a sort of above inflation sort of pay rise for public
04:18sector workers. We would assume funding, if that happened, would be available to the Scottish
04:22government. So there is just a cap in what the unions are expecting and what has been offered
04:30from COSLA so far. COSLA say that this is the top. This is all they've got to offer. We need
04:36the Scottish government to intervene. Previously, SNP council leaders and independent council leaders
04:43on COSLA, which kind of is the group of council leaders across Scotland, have blocked even an
04:48attempt to get the Scottish government to come to the table. That block's been sort of lifted
04:53yesterday. There was a motion passed that will officially call on the Scottish government to
04:58intervene and to ask for more money. So that is the way that we get a resolution, is if the
05:03Scottish government can find some more money or promise some more money somehow to improve the
05:09offer. But as things stand with the Scottish government kind of still sitting back with very
05:14hands-off attitude to it's not their problem to solve, we're still going to head for this industrial
05:19action next month. We know last time, two years ago, Nicola Sturgeon came in, I think in the first
05:25week of September or the final week of August, and was sort of credited, rightly or wrongly,
05:31for resolving the strikes. Note that did come after the festivals were pretty much done and
05:36dusted. So will we see a similar situation here? We'll find out. You can read all the latest about
05:43those stories that David's talked about at scotsman.com. Go to the navigation bar, find the
05:49politics tab, and all the information is in there. You can follow us on Facebook,
05:55X and Instagram. Also go and buy a copy of the paper tomorrow. You will have the latest on the
06:02strikes and you also have the latest on the Olympics with the opening ceremony happening
06:08on Friday. Thanks very much for joining us.