it comes just a day after a gunman killed ten people in a suspected racially motivated terror attack at a supermarket in the city of buffalo. now on bbc news, dateline. hello and welcome to the programme, which brings together the foreign correspondents who write, blog and broadcast for audiences back home from the dateline london. it s been a convention busting week, this one a queen s speech delivered for the first time in 70 years by a royal other than the queen. two countries strictly neutral for 80 years, preparing to take sides. in northern ireland, a party in favour of reuniting the island of ireland topped the poll for the first time in the centuries since ireland was partitioned. to discuss all that and more, in the studio are brian 0 connell, former bureau chief in london for the irish broadcaster rte, eunice goes, portuguese journalist and university lecturer and newly created british citizen, and jeffrey kofman, who s been both a war correspondent and news anc
hello and welcome to the programme that brings together the foreign journalists who write, blog and broadcast to audiences back home from the dateline london. it s been a convention busting week, this one a queen s speech delivered for the first time in 70 years by a royal other than the queen. two countries strictly neutral for 80 years, preparing to take sides. in northern ireland, a party in favour of reuniting the island of ireland topped the poll for the first time in the centuries since ireland was partitioned. to discuss all that and more, in the studio are brian o connell, former bureau chief in london for the irish broadcaster rte, eunice goes, portuguesejournalist and university lecturer and newly created british citizen, and jeffrey kofman, who s been both a war correspondent and news anchor in canada and the united states. good to have you back with us. jeffrey, let s start with nato expansion. sweden and finland, finland s president, sauli niinisto, said on f
Are sustaining at the moment, i wonder. a couple of other points you mentioned sacrifices the finns may be making. and sweden obviously still hasn t formally decided whether it sjoining. but they published a report on friday which was suggesting that there were good arguments for, the swedish foreign minister saying that actually, she felt it would make the risk of war less likely because it raised the stakes if russia did attack any of the other countries. butjust in terms of the price finns may pay, already we hear that a russian electricity company may cut off 10% of finland s electricity supplies because suddenly, there s a problem about payment that s mysteriously arisen just as this announcement is made. we hear that putin is threatening to station, possibly, nuclear armed missiles in kaliningrad, which is sort of that little enclave between lithuania and poland on the baltic. i mean, there are ways that he can make people feel even more nervous if he wants to, without actually
I mean, it s that s not complicated. and, you know, that s what s happened in this case. - the other interesting| thing is that finland s border with russia is, what? 12,1,300 kilometers? and the kremlin spokesman said i the other day that they were going to take what was it strategic, strategic, i military and technical measures, - which presumably means putting a lot of weapons along the border, as they did with ukraine. - but ijust wonder. what he s got left. that ll cover 1,300 kilometers. given the losses the russians are sustaining at the moment. i wonder a couple of other points, you mentioned sacrifices the finns may be making. and sweden obviously still hasn t formally decided whether it sjoining. but they published a report on friday which was suggesting that there were good arguments for the swedish foreign minister saying that actually she felt it would make the risk of war less likely, because it raised the stakes
Why are we going to waste our time proposing creative solutions. and they are very bureaucratic. they are very detailed and so on. why are we going to waste our brainpower developing these super complicated solutions if this british government is not is not serious, it s not taking any of these proposals seriously, and more importantly, has not made any alternative proposals and not presented them on the table? brian, why are the implications of this within northern ireland so toxic, given that trading is going on as we speak? it s not as if people have stopped trading goods across between the uk and the great britain part of the uk and northern ireland and the republic of ireland and therefore the rest of the european union? well, in terms of the governance of northern ireland, just, - you know, on its own, - the northern ireland assembly is now paralyzed for the reasons that. i you see on friday, but couldn t even elect any business executive.