Speeches by Doogan.

“Are any management or executive level posts in line for redundancy?”

“Excellent and live. The news in the north will go out live?”

“It does give you that number 3. You cannot pick and choose; you either deliver against your obligations or you relinquish your number 3.”

“The comprehensive cost-cutting strategy that you have set out is not comprehensive at all. It focused on the north in its greater part, and it is focused on the news in its greater part, and in the news in the north in its greater part. We know what homogenous Scottish TV news reporting looks like, we can see it on the…”

“With all due respect to ITV Border, lots of which is in the north of England, the STV North covers over half of Scotland’s landmass and a quarter of Scotland’s population. I can assure you we are not much interested in getting the news as it happened two hours ago.”

“But you have to broadcast live and simultaneously. That is the terms of your licence.”

“If Ofcom come back in the negative, how will you advance this cost-cutting strategy if you are not allowed to close your Aberdeen studio?”

“Sorry, Ofcom.”

“So you are banking on Ofgem coming back with a positive decision for you?”

“Sorry, your delivering the strategy requires a derogation from the licence you have signed up to, so how can you say you will deliver the strategy?”

“This is a kneejerk reaction. It has all the hallmarks of a kneejerk reaction. We have a new chief executive coming in, shortly followed by a collapse in the share price. We have newly refurbished studios not getting properly used. We have a chief financial officer announcing earlier on this year that this was a cash-ge…”

“The terms of the licence say that the bulletins have to go out live and simultaneously with all the other 6 o’clock bulletins, so that is inconsistent with the terms of the licence.”

“We have covered quite a lot of ground already, but is it your belief that STV wishes to create a homogenous Scottish news programme like the BBC or does it want to create a pre-recorded north bulletin that will go out at 6 o’clock while the live bulletin for south is going out at 6 o’clock, both from the Glasgow studio…”

“Okay, but the £3 million recurring savings is predicated on 60 posts. Where do we think those other 23 posts are?”

“What is worrying me, Mr Radcliffe, is that you have gone nuclear on Aberdeen and STV North in order to balance your books in-year and you are hoping to make £3 million recurring savings every year across STV as a result of this. My worry—and we are discussing what is happening to STV North and staff in Aberdeen now—is …”

“Sometimes crime wears a suit, as happened in Brechin in my constituency, where Mackie Motors had equity in their vehicles stolen by a French bank based in London. Then, through mendacity or incompetence or both, the bank turned off the oxygen for that business of 50 years. I have met with Home Office and Treasury Minis…”

“I congratulate and salute the brave aircrew who intercepted this flagrant breach not just of Poland’s airspace but of the international rules-based order. I do not believe for one second that this was some inadvertent mistake. This is classic Russian playbook. Russia was probing NATO in that attack and will continue to…”

“In the spring statement earlier this year, the Chancellor said that the responsible choice is to reduce our level of borrowing in the years ahead. That is a noble sentiment, which I applaud—if she was not trying to fix a watch with a hammer. This is the Chancellor that has seen UK debt interest now soar to a 27-year hi…”

“If Scotland is lucky, we will get a per capita share of the £250 million in the growth deal, which is barely twice what the SNP Scottish Government have invested in the skills academy in BAE alone. However, the omens are not good, because Scotland is routinely short-changed in defence expenditure. The London Government…”

“An independent northern European nation of 5.5 million people, Norway, has just signed an order for £10 billion-worth of the world’s best anti-submarine warfare frigates, designed and built in Glasgow in Scotland. Despite that, despite Scotland’s longer coastline, and despite the ingenuity displayed in that product, no…”