00:00Hello and welcome to the Scotsman's Daily Video Bulletin for this Thursday.
00:04My name's Dale Miller, I'm Deputy Editor of the Scotsman and I'm joined by Deputy Political Editor,
00:10David Boll. David, we're going to get into a couple of stories that are on the front
00:15page of today's Scotsman and we splashed on Stampede of Offshore Wind Condemned. This is
00:24direct criticism coming from the Scottish Fisherman's Federation, which is critical of
00:31the number of applications around wind farms offshore that are being approved and the impact
00:38that it may have on their particular business. We know Berwick Bank, which is off the Kenzie
00:43East Lothie coast and not that far from Edinburgh has been recently approved and ticked off by the
00:50Scottish Government to proceed. So you can read that full story at scotsman.com.
00:56But also in the wing on the front page there, a significant development with a now former Scottish
01:03Labour SNP member, or not former, but a suspended member. David, this is quite a significant story
01:11that broke late yesterday. Can you just talk me through the details of the SNP involved that we
01:16were at? Yeah, so the Labour MSP, Colin Smith, who is quite a senior figure in Scottish Labour,
01:24he's been the General Secretary previously, he's held a lot of front bench roles under Anas Awar's
01:30leadership and Richard Leonard, his predecessor, and Labour have suspended him after he was arrested and
01:36charged by police over on suspicion of possession of indecent images. So it will come to quite a shock to
01:44a lot in the Labour Party and probably around Holyrood. He's to appear at court in Dumfries, set a later date.
01:52He put out a statement himself yesterday saying that the events had come as a shock and there was a deeply
01:58stressful time and that he was cooperating with the police and kind of asked for privacy for him
02:04and his family. And Scottish Labour pretty much is believed as soon as they found out about the
02:11allegations they moved to suspend him and we'll just have to wait and see what happens next.
02:18For Scottish Labour, it does leave them in a tricky position. It was a pretty
02:24compact statement that they put out yesterday, David. Yeah, there's not much they can really say
02:29at this stage. Their policy, as far as I'm aware, is to suspend councillors and MSPs and MPs as soon
02:38as they're made aware of police sort of matters. So yeah, as you said, it's not a great
02:46situation for them to be in, but I think they've done all they could, they could probably do at this
02:50stage and just have to wait and see what happens if there's any further police action.
02:56Potential on the back of the charges, potential court date at a later date. We'll bring you all
03:02the latest, but if you want to read the story on column, if that is available at scotsman.com.
03:09We referred to the wind farm story on the front as well. I think this has obviously become even more
03:16prominent on the back of Berwick Bank, and we know that there are some companies pushing ahead with
03:21Scott Wind projects as well off the North East Coast. How much weight do you think the
03:29stance from the Fisherman's Federation will carry? How much of a concern do you think this is, Dave?
03:34Yeah, I think you can see where they're coming from with their concerns here, that there's only a
03:40limited space in the North Sea to operate. And if wind does scale up to 40 gigawatt, which is what the
03:47Scottish government is kind of planning for, then fishermen and wildlife are potentially going to
03:54be impacted. We heard it with the Berwick Bank, there was a lot of wildlife groups warning about
04:00birds being impacted quite significantly by the Berwick Bank development, and fishermen will be
04:06worried that they're just going to run out of spaces. There are plans for wind farms in areas of
04:13the seabed or the sea that have been fished for a long time, so changes would be needed. We obviously
04:20had the row a couple of years ago now about the protected marine areas. The fishermen pushed back and
04:28they managed to get a change. That was the Greens kind of driving that policy, but the S&P had to commit
04:34to it initially. So you can see why they're trying to speak out, because sometimes it does bring about
04:39a change if enough people get riled up and are concerned about it. But the Scottish government,
04:46its energy strategy is to scale up wind. That is kind of the strategy, as far as we're aware. We don't
04:52have an energy strategy written down, other than from 2017. So we'll see that when it comes out later this
05:00year. But wind is the future for Scotland. But they're going to have to do it in a managed way,
05:06and they're going to have to do it in a sensible way. There are a lot of people still to please
05:10around this, even though most people are behind scaling up renewables and wind energy. There are
05:16some people that say maybe a bit of nuclear or a bit more to do with oil and gas in the medium term
05:23would alleviate some of these concerns. But the Scottish government is insistent that this is the
05:28right strategy to get to net zero by the middle of the century.
05:32And we know Donald Trump pushed this back into the public consciousness, if it needed it,
05:37with his windmill reference when he was up opening his new course up in Aberdeenshire. I suspect there'll
05:44be more to run in and around some of these projects and different views on the impacts,
05:52as you say, environmental, fishing, but also any public concerns around them as we move on as well.
05:59Scott Reid, our business correspondent, has also written about an onshore wind farm development
06:06that's been given the green light in the south of Scotland as well. You can read that full story
06:10at scotsman.com with 44 turbines involved in this case. David, thanks for joining us and talking
06:17us through those couple of stories. You can get all the latest politics coverage from the Scotsman team
06:23by following us on social media channels or going directly to the politics tab on the navigation bar
06:30on the Scotsman homepage. Don't forget you can download the Scotsman app as well to catch up on
06:34your very latest. We do have a great digital version of the paper that you can read via the app as well.
06:41And if you're a print reader, pick up a copy of the Scotsman in print tomorrow, where we'll have
06:46several stories, including a story from Diane Abbott, who's speaking at the Edinburgh Festival tonight.
06:52Thanks to everyone for joining us.
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