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You're listening to the Monocle Daily, first.
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Broadcast on 30 October 2025 on Monocle Radio.
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Is the US China trade war over? Has the Netherlands lost interest in the populist far right and the romantic struggles besetting maga world? I'm Andrew Muller. The Monocle Daily starts now. Hello and welcome to the mon. Welcome to Monocle Daily, coming to you from our studios here at Midori House in London. I'm Andrew Muller. My guests Carol Walker and Bill Hayton will discuss the day's big stories and our weekly letter from reaches us from the Faroe Islands. Stay tuned. All that and more coming up right here on the Monocle Daily. This is the Monocle Daily. I'm Andrew Muller and I'm joined today by Carol Walker, Times radio presenter, political commentator and former BBC correspondent, and Bill Hayton, associate fellow for the Asia Pacific program at Chatham House. Hello to you both.
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C
Hello.
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B
Yeah, good evening, Carol.
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A
We will mercifully not be talking much about British politics on tonight's program because for the benefit of our international listeners, it is today consumed with absolute inanity that I do not want to get into at all, because who cares? But I do want to ask, Carol, is it always like this? Is British politics perhaps after the last decade or so of tumultuous upheaval, actually quite enjoying bickering amongst itself about things about, about which no sane person could care less?
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B
Well, look, what's wonderful about British politics and I have followed it for a good many decades now, is that you will get. I know you said you didn't want to talk about it, but you'll get a little inane, what appears to be an inane story. I'm going with inane on this, about a senior politician who's done something ever so slightly wrong. In this case, it was the chancellor who failed to get a license before she rented out her house.
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A
Told you it was inane and it seems inane.
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B
And then political journalists like me dig and dig away at all the details and it appears that the explanation that she first gave that she didn't know about this seems a bit odd because she actually talked quite a lot about this particular licensing regime and then it comes down to whether in fact the politician had been honest. The, the great lesson that so many people learn to their cost, that often it's the COVID up rather than the crime, even if it wasn't even really a crime in the first place. And then you end up with a massive political scandal. So we love it.
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C
But isn't It.
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We absolutely love it and it hits all parties and Labour's been hit by.
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People, but no one's sticking a gate on the end of this one, are they?
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B
I would say it's not quite over.
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C
Yet, but isn't it interesting to be kind of arguing about whether a politician is honest or not, rather than just assuming that they aren't?
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A
That is something. And Bill to you, because we will shortly be talking about the Asia Pacific, which is very much your bailiwick, and you will shortly be physically present in it.
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C
I do, yes. Yes. I roll on the South China Sea disputes because I get to go to Southeast Asia from time to time and talk about them. So don't say nobody benefits from international crises.
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A
You're going to Manila and to Kuala Lumpur, two cities I have not myself visited. Unless you count Kuala Lumpur Airport, which I don't. There are rules about these things.
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C
Yeah, exact. Exactly. You're not allowed to color in the map unless you've actually spent a night there. No, no, no. Manila. Exciting city. If you are sort of fan of the Bourne films, you might have seen a bit of Manila. Probably not the best advert for a holiday there. I'd suggest maybe leaving Manila and going to the other more pretty bits of the Philippines, but very exciting. And at a time when, you know, everyone's worried about what we're going to talk about tonight, you know, U.S. china relations. The Philippines sitting right in the middle of it is quite a fun place to be.
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Well, we will start with an apparent truce in the U.S. china trade war, and another demonstration of U.S. president Donald Trump's signature cause. Problem solve problem claim, credit for solving problem caused. President Trump has met his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping in South Korea, and among the upshots are a reduction on the tariffs imposed on China by the U.S. a suspension of expanded restrictions on Chinese companies receiving U.S. exports, an easing up by China on restrictions of the export of rare earths to the US and some result assumption by China of the purchase of American soybeans.
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C
Don't forget the soybeans.
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A
Don't forget the soybeans, which are, to be fair, extremely important, especially if you are an American soybean farmer. But, Bill, there has been somewhat, I think it's fair to say, divergent messaging on this great summit. Well, obviously, yes, between the United States and China. Donald Trump has said. Amazing. 12 out of 10.
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C
12 out of 10.
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China. And I quote, we reached a basic consensus on addressing our respective major concerns.
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C
Yeah, and something about steel steering a ship in a choppy sea. And Things like that. I mean, there are a few things. I mean, one is a Chinese reference to leader led diplomacy, which is the same kind of language they use when they're talking to Vladimir Putin. The idea that you can just kind of talk to the guy at the top and sort of smooth things over. I mean, what they've done, I mean, at best, this is a one year truce and there's a prospect of a Trump visit to China in April and things will keep bumping along. I mean, this time a year ago, if you said that, that U.S. tariffs on China would be a mere 47%, you know, we'd have thought, you know, the world is coming to an end, you know, but having dropped them from 57% to 47%, we're supposed to go hallelujah. And on the soybeans, the. I think they've, the Chinese have said they're going to buy something like 24 million tons next, for the next three years. Well, last year the sales were 25 million tons. So it's just a kind of pathetic little gesture, really. And meanwhile, the sort of big issues about rare earths and whether the US Will sell advanced chips to the Chinese and that sort of just keeps rumbling on and on and on. So I think this is the new normal, to use a terrible phrase, Carol.
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The very real risk of being seen to nitpick. This has nothing's actually been signed yet. Could this still all unravel if Trump wakes up tomorrow in a funny mood?
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B
What you mean? Trump announces a big deal with a great deal of flourish and actually none of the details have been pinned down.
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A
I know, sounds incredible.
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B
I think there's every possibility of that. As you mentioned, he's describing this meeting as a 12 on the scale of 1 to 10. The Chinese were somewhat less enthusiastic. There was this other quote here about the economic and trade teams of the two countries exchanged in depth views on important economic and trade issues and reached a consensus on resolving them. So that makes it clear that there is a very long way to go on this and that a lot of the deep details have not been pinned down. And it is what we have seen time and time again from President Trump. He likes the big theater, he likes the grand summits, the meeting with other powerful world leaders, and then he leads someone else to sort out the tiresome details. But very often, and I mean, we're seeing this very much in Gaza at the moment, the details really do matter. It will matter in this. And as you've seen, two have both pointed out what has happened is that President Trump slapped these massive deals on the Chinese, these massive tariffs on the Chinese. They responded rather more robustly than he had actually figured that they would. He then realized he needed to do a deal because his soya bean farmers were getting very cross that the Chinese weren't buying their products. And so now he's gone out there and solved this deal, which takes us more or less back to where we were at the start of the process. But clearly, if you've got the two biggest economies in the world talking to one another, trying to resolve problems, that is a good thing. So it's got to be positive in that light.
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A
Well, one hopes so. But, Bill, how very hard for me to entirely cast myself inside the collective mind of the Chinese Communist Party. But how close do you think their attitude approaching this summit will have been? Look, just throw him a bone. We've only really got to ride this out for another three years and maybe we'll have better luck next time.
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C
I think there's quite a lot of that. I mean, I think the Chinese Communist Party was one of the few organizations that took Trump seriously, but, you know, before the election and sort of said, what is this man going to do and what are we going to do now to prepare for it? Oh, let's stockpile as many commodities as possible. Let's kind of ring fence things. Let's think about our defenses. And so when Trump announces things, they have a kind of, you know, list of things that they can announce. But I think they probably think that whoever comes after Trump will have some of his inclinations. It's certainly not going to be some sort of liberal free trader that gets, you know, and suddenly opens up the US Markets. So to some extent they think this is the new normal. I also think that, you know, inspired by their, you know, their Marxist dialectical view of history, they think that they're on the winning curve and, you know, the US Is on a, you know, perpetual downward slope and all they've got to do is kind of sit tight and, you know, historical inevitability will out and, you know, American capitalism decline and Chinese Leninist led capitalism will seamlessly rise to the top of the pile.
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And, but just finally on this one, Carol, going back to what we were discussing earlier about leader led diplomacy, which obviously Donald Trump is a huge fan of. But it's not impossible that the Chinese, as things stands, don't mind that themselves because we have in the figure of their president, Xi Jinping, somebody who has centralized power in his own office and in his own Person like I think, I think probably no Chinese leader since the emperors.
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B
No, absolutely. And you know, President Xi doesn't have to worry about things like elections. So he can afford to go down this leader led diplomacy route. And although it hasn't gone entirely his way, I mean China is helped by the fact that it has got a wealth of these rare earth minerals which nations around the world realizing they desperately need for all their high tech products and all their military hardware and so on. And he has also been quite astute. And Bill will know more about this though, about looking ahead at some of these technological advances and seeing where China can corner the market and have these developments into parts of Africa to make sure that if they haven't got the kind of natural resources that they need within the vastness of China, that they can get them from the allies where they've invested and done deals well, to.
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The Netherlands and an election result which seems likely to unleash a torrent of wishful thinking to the effect that populist xenophobia is receding from the European continent. This election was not actually due until 2028, but a snap vote was called after the previous governing coalition was pancaked by the flounce of Geert Wilders and his far right party for Freedom. Voters appear to have punished the PVV for this and perhaps other things. They have lost a chunk of seats and as of this broad seem tied for first place or thereabouts with the Centre Left Party Democrat 66. Given that D66 will have a much easier time putting a coalition together, the Netherlands next Prime minister seems likely to be its youngest. D66's Rob Yetten, aged 38. Carol, this, as I was saying, this election will have been followed with perhaps more interest than Dutch elections generally are by quite a lot of Europe in this country in particular, where of course we have in recent years the emergence of Reform UK, which I think we can think of as the UK's PPV analogue. Might mainstream parties in this country, both Labour and the Tories, be hoping is this now starting to deflate?
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B
I'm sure there will be an awful lot of wishful thinking across Europe and here in the uk amongst politicians who are concerned about the rise of the far right populists. It's always quite dangerous, I think, to look at what's happening in one country and necessarily read across to another Geert Wilders. It appears that his populist movement has taken a bit of a hit from being a part of the coalition government and that realization that those populist messages are often more difficult when it comes to actually delivering the policies that they're talking about. And that does appear to have been part of the reason that Geert Wilders and his party have lost ground in the Netherlands. I mean, and it is interesting as you, you mentioned reform UK here in Britain, they've only got a very small number of MPs in parliament, but they have recently gained control of a number of local councils where they promise to have doge like cutbacks on the scale of the bureaucracy, cut the costs, cut the taxes and lo and behold, they've realized that actually when it comes down to it, they can't do it and they're going to have to put up the taxes for local councillors. So I'm sure that people will be looking at the parallels. But I think the other important issue in all of this is that I think many of the closer neighbors to the Netherlands will be looking at this and saying, well, look, thank goodness that in Rob Jetters they've got a leader who appears to be very pro European is interestingly enough, one of the few leaders that we do hear saying we need lots more European integration. Which is not a message that you hear very much even in other European countries. So it was a close run thing. There was no clear result. As you say, the two were neck and neck. There does appear to have been a shift here away from the far right populists and towards the centrists rather than the more left wing greens. But reading across into a wider movement. I would be cautious about doing that at this stage.
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Bill, leading question reflecting the prejudices of the presenter. When you deep down where Geert Wilders and his ilk elsewhere live, do they actually want to govern? Because it is obviously tremendously good fun running as the sort of insurgent outsider who's willing to tell it like it is, et cetera, et cetera. But then as I have said from this chair before, you end up getting elected and then people just want their bins collected and potlucked.
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C
Yeah, governing is quite boring and yeah.
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And it is all terrifically tedious and quite hard work.
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C
And sometimes other people have a view.
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A
That confuses with yours. I mean, is it possible that Geert Wilders is not entirely displeased by this result world?
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C
It's entirely possible. And I think that's, you know, it's not just the populists on that. I mean, there are plenty on the left, you know, for whom saying things is more important than doing things. And you know, you've ended up in effect, with, you know, an election in the Netherlands here, where you've got different ends of the spectrum, you know, are more keen on saying things than doing things. You know, the sort of Greens kind of going off about sort of, you know, Gaza or, you know, trying to, you know, assert things on, you know, social rights or something. But it's not actually about the nuts and bolts of governing the country. And at the far end you've got unrealistic promises about stopping all immigration and that sort of thing and reclaiming some kind of idea of a homogenous society, whatever that means. But I think it's not just one populist party in the Netherlands. There are many populist parties.
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There are many parties forced.
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C
Yeah. And it's worth pointing out that even the so called winner of this election has got 26 seats. So they've got to find another 50 seats to make a coalition. And last time it took seven months between the election and the actual government being formed.
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I mean, which I did want to ask about, Carol, as somebody who covers the British system, which has obviously been mostly a fairly solid two party arrangement for a very long time, does have that first past the post system of electing MPs. Does any of this make you at all wistful about the joys of proportional representation? Because as Bill points out, it took months to form a Dutch government last time. It will be astonishing if it doesn't take months to form a Dutch government this time. I mean, that said, in the Netherlands, as far as I can tell, while all this is going on, the lights still come on and water still appears to come out of the taps.
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B
Well, what is fascinating is that we are definitely here in the UK looking at a fracturing, a splintering amongst the political parties. We're due to have local and elections in the devolved nations of the UK in Wales and Scotland coming up in the spring, where you could see a fracturing of the vote between not just Labour and the Conservatives and the Lib Dems and the Greens, but the Scottish National National Party in Scotland and the and Plaid Cymru, which is the Welsh nationalist party in Wales and has just won an important by election there. And the other interesting factor in this, of course, is that, I mean, we did have a coalition here in the UK that was unusual, that was historically unusual. And when you look at the polls at the moment, and we are still supposedly three and a half years off the next general election, it's very difficult to see any of our parties getting an overall majority. So despite the Rather old fashioned and increasingly rare. First past the post system, I suspect it will be difficult for any party here in the UK to actually govern on their own.
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A
But the mainstream parties, or I guess Bill, what we might think of as the old school, they would like to think responsible parties, they are at an eternal disadvantage running against the likes of Wilders, of Reform uk, of whatever your local analogue is, even Trumpism in the United States, in that actually doing stuff rather than saying stuff, which you were talking about earlier. The trouble is that doing stuff tends to be difficult, expensive and it takes time. And you're trying to get all of that done against a background of people going, huh, I could fix all of that tomorrow.
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C
Well, generally the policies that government's sort of implementing today are because the ones that they tried before didn't work or threw up problems. So kind of saying, oh well, let's just throw out everything we've done for the last 50 years and kind of go back to basics. Well, we'll just end up with the problems that we had 50 years ago and then we'll start again. So, yeah, but I mean, I guess there's, there's that sense, I mean, I think there's a sense in this country in particular of life being stuck somehow kind of that everybody's got a sort of in a sort of checkmate position that there's, you know, there's, you know, regulators are kind of in a position that, you know, can thwart development and whatever it may be, whether you're in favor of, you know, build, baby build and the blocks on that, or whether you think that the, you know, the country needs to do more to tackle climate change, emissions. You know, we just ended up in this position of which is, you know, a compromise, but nobody's particularly happy with it.
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B
And what I think we are going to see, and are already seeing, is an awful lot of protest votes. People either lodging a protest vote for Reform UK because they're fed up with all the other more established parties, or voting for the Greens who have moved pretty much further to the left. Or alternatively, as we saw in a recent by election, voting tactically to either to prevent parties like Reform UK gaining a foothold which could throw up all kinds of fascinating electoral results.
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A
Well, to Paris and a brouhaha, or perhaps a brouhorn horn over the propriety of filming for commercial purposes at arguably sensitive sites. Jean Javier Del Estrade, the acclaimed director of a new miniseries about the lives of Survivors of the November 2015 terrorist attacks on France, has been getting an earful about the fact that the scene set in the Bataclan theatre, where 90 people were murdered were actually filmed in the Bataclan Theatre. Various critics have damned this decision as insensitive, indecent, etc. Although not the seven survivors on whose stories the series de vivant is based, who in fact signed a letter to the Bataclan's initially reluctant management asking for permission. At which point, I guess we have to ponder, Carol, does anybody else's opinion really matter?
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B
Look, I can understand why some of those who were directly touched by this, this horrific attack would be concerned about this, but it seems to me that so long as the maker of this drama documentary are approaching it in a sensitive way and are trying to bring to a wider audience to convey these horrific events and what lay behind them and what they could mean for the country, and they want to do so in as realistic a way as possible, then I would think that they should be able to film inside the Bata clan. Though it would be important to take into account the concerns and to consult victims, families, relatives in advance. I interviewed recently the maker of a drama documentary about the Lockerbie attack and what happened on the ground in Lockerbie, and they went quite some time in advance, talked to the local residents, the people who'd been touched by it and so on, to try to ensure that they. That this was a genuine attempt to convey what. What happened there, albeit in a dramatized way. And it was a very powerful drama and it was worth watching. And if you're going to do that, I think, you know, you do need to set these kinds of programs in the locations where they. Where they took place.
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Bill. It is funny where people get up in arms about things like this, though, because the Bataclan Theatre reopened after the terrorist attacks as a rock venue, which it still is. The Psychedelic Furs are playing on Sunday night. Tickets, I checked, are still available.
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C
Seen them already.
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A
Yeah, but. But is. Is that any more or less whatever it is people are upset about than making a film there?
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C
And I, you know, the same could be said about the Manchester arena, obviously, indeed, in 2017. So, yeah, I mean, I think, you know, well, life will go on. But I mean, there are two things here, and one is, is, you know, the sensitivity, as Carol was saying. But there's also, I think there's an attraction. I mean, there are entire, you know, the whole idea of dark tourism is a thing that, you know, people actually go to these sites, you know, for whatever reason, to sort of be there because it's become, you know, a place of historical importance, I guess. And so therefore, you know, I think we just have to accept that that's kind of part of human interest that, you know, people are attracted to things of, you know, I guess of notoriety, of celebrity. You know, you kind of want to be there to somehow experience the place.
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A
There is an argument I can vaguely see, Carol, that this is not necessary and it is perhaps a bit sensationalist and ghoulish. You could I'm sure, recreate the Bataclan on a soundstage quite easily. Possibly it may cost more than just going to the actual place and shooting it, but it could certainly be done to a degree that would leave no.
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B
Viewer any the perhaps though, if you are an artist, you would feel that being on the location where these events happened has a certain resonance. Look, there would be ways around it. But you know, we see there were plenty of films made about the D day landings only What, I suppose 15, 20 years after they took place. And I don't think anyone said, oh well, you know, you better actually go and film that in Scotland. So perhaps the beaches wouldn't quite match up, come to think about it. But I can understand why as an artist you would want to use a setting as close to the event that you're trying to convey as possible.
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A
Well, to the United States now, specifically the capital thereof, where it seems that the influx of MAGA types who came to town with President Trump are rather struggling for people keen to listen to pillow talk about the cat eating proclivities of Haitians. It says here that conservatives in Washington have encountered a dating pool populated, at least as they see it, by more a eels and snapping turtles. The US Capitol is one of the least Trump friendly jurisdictions in the country. In the 2026 presidential election, Trump won just over 6% of the district of Columbia's vote. If only we had somebody at this table with some experience, Bill. Of how politics and personal relationship may intersect. And to bring listeners up to speed, Bill's Mrs. Is a member of actual parliament.
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C
A member of actual parliament, thankfully, with a different family name. So that makes life slightly easier. Indeed.
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A
But am I right in assuming at least that you are in broad agreement on most things, at least politically?
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C
I guess because we met in the fevered atmosphere of student politics, you know, so when of course it was all. So I guess we were sort of. We could see ourselves being aligned at that point. We never had to have any sort of, you know, major. Having said that, you know, there are, you know, there are spaces and are togetherness. I should point Out.
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A
But if at the time either one of you had been a massive Tory, would either one of you have considered that a deal?
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C
I think that might have been, you know, kind of difficult possibly at the time, but I mean, yeah, from different political universes, different sort of, you know, but I think it's. I think if your intentions are in the right direction, I mean, I think if you had a different view of human character, all humans are selfish, all humans are altruistic or something like that, there's no possible way you could probably live together.
- [26:28]
A
I think if you share values rather than opinions, that could work.
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C
I think that works.
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A
Yes, I think that makes sense. Carol. This is a repeated thing which comes up on, on both sides of the political divide in the United States. Certainly that this has become much more of a thing in dating, which is obviously fraught enough as it is than it used to be. The idea that people on both sides, both liberals and conservatives, now regard certain political incline nations as an absolute red flag. Does that surprise you?
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B
No. In such a deeply divided nation as the United States, not at all. And I remember there was lots of discussion during the whole Brexit process here in the uk. You know, could you possibly date a Brexiteer if you're not one yourself? Could this be the issue that actually busts up relationships and so on? And look, you obviously don't have to have exactly the same political views as your partner, but in general someone that you're attracted to and if you're on a out there kind of looking for love would tend to be somebody that you felt might be broadly on your wavelength. So if you're a massive MAGA supporter looking for love in New York, maybe you'd find fewer opportunities. Just as if you were a woke Democrat seeking love in Texas, you might slightly struggle to find someone on your same wavelength. Although perhaps you could have a, you know, a shared sense of being, being up against, up against the rest of those around you. I think these are things that. Absolutely fascinating. I can't imagine being in a relationship where I couldn't talk about politics at home. I think I would find that very different, difficult. Although my husband.
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C
Boring. Shouts the husband.
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B
There was a bit more of that in our household.
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C
What I loved about this little story, little detail was it seemed to be that the, the MAGA women were a bit disappointed with the standard of MAGA men. They seem to be a bit. There was a way that basically said they were unfit, you know, and a bit maybe sort of wearing their T shirts, not dressing up, you know, kind of looking, you know, rather, you know.
- [28:43]
A
Self indulgent, so that they could move to Washington, end up being won over by hunky baristas with man buns.
- [28:49]
C
It could, could be true, as long as they dress nicely and met their standards of manliness.
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A
Well, on that upbeat note, Bill Hayton and Carol Walker, thank you both for joining us. Finally, on today's show, it is time for our regular letter from Somewhere, which this week reaches us from Chris Chermack in the Faroe Islands.
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C
I say two things to Europe. Stop the windmills. You're ruining your countries. I really mean it. It's so sad. You fly over and you see these windmills all over the place, ruining your beautiful fields and valleys and killing your birds. And if they're stuck in the ocean, ruining your oceans.
- [29:27]
D
So this was literally the first thing on Donald Trump's mind when he landed in Scotland in late July to inaugurate a golf club and take a sort of working summer vacation. In fact, wind farms were on his mind even more than immigration. That was only his second gripe on landing in Scotland, which really does say something about his fixation on these infernal winter. And of course, not for the first or last time. At the end of August, the Trump administration tried to shutter an almost completed offshore wind farm off the coast of Rhode island, possibly in anger at its Danish owners reaching a deal with California, possibly just because Trump doesn't like windmills. Now, as it happens, it was just after Donald Trump's musings in Scotland about wind farms that I found myself a little further north, north in the archipelago known as the Faroe Islands, nestled in the northern Atlantic Ocean between Scotland and Iceland. It's an island nation or series of island nations, just around 50,000 people spread across 17 different islands. An 18th one is uninhabited, and two of the inhabited ones include just one family. And what's interesting is that the Pharaohs are trying to do pretty much exactly the opposite of what trouble. They're aiming to generate all of their energy from renewable sources, primarily wind, by the year 2030. But this isn't really a letter about climate change or the fractured politics of energy. As important as those discussions may be. This letter is more about their appearance. Because as I was standing atop the rolling hills of Sudoroy, the southernmost island of the Pharaoh's Archipelago, the blades of a wind turbine turning gracefully in the breeze above, above me, I found myself rolling Trump's comments over in my mind. From a purely aesthetic perspective, do wind farms really spoil a view? Now, I'll grant you that very few things can spoil a view as beautiful as that of the Pharaohs. The landscape is a sort of lush green that's dotted with small towns and colorfully painted houses, most of them sitting right in a bay on the ocean. It is all one giant, idyllic place to go for a hike from town to town town. And driving along one side of the many inlets, we even spotted a small wind farm on a corner cliff on the other side. Spotlighted by the sun, it was as if the wind farm's architects had meant to turn it into some sort of attraction, the star of that corner of the island. Without the wind farm, the cliff would have looked bare and, dare I say, less interesting. It's not just the wind farms that are rendered pretty in the Faroe Island's serene atmosphere. Atmosphere. In many of the bays and inlets, you'll find salmon farms, large rings with salmon jumping up and down inside. These too are essentially industrial level fishing operations, and you can debate their ethical merits all you want, although most faro companies do operate organically. But the point is that standing on top of a hill, staring down at the water below you, there is something beautiful about the rings, like the Olympic emblem staring back at out at you and the playfulness of the fish within them. Even the power plants here are pretty. The National Energy Company's colors are green, red and yellow, and the buildings of the power plants reflect those colors even as they're nestled in idyllic locations on the ocean's edge. Now, that's not to say that the Pharaohs don't have their own NIMBY problem or not in my backyard, because there is a resistance movement to building more wind farms. But personally, I found it hard to see a problem with the view. If I did own an acre of land here, say, I found myself thinking that a wind farm in the far corner to stare at would be kind of soothing. And though the farrows are special, I do find the same thing elsewhere. Driving through the farmlands of rural Germany, I actually enjoy seeing wind farms dotting the landscape, along with solar farms, too, with the sun glistening off the panels. The other reason that I don't understand all this talk of wind farm aesthetic pollution is that for decades now, we've somehow grown to tolerate electricity masts dotting our landscapes, both in cities and in the countryside. The Faroe Islands had those too, of course, crossing its green hills. And while if anywhere could make even electricity poles beautiful, it would be the Faroes, I have to say I found those to be an eyesore. So, yes, there are limits to the beauty of infrastructure. Infrastructure. But then the point is we've already reached those limits. We tolerate electricity lines and giant garbage cans and highways cutting through our picturesque landscapes. Standing among the hills of the Faroes, walking from one wind turbine to another, I'm struggling to see how this is any less or more beautiful. For Monocle in Sudoroy, I'm Chris Chermack.
- [34:21]
A
Thank you, Chris. And that is all for this edition of the Daily. Thanks to our panelists today, Carol Walker and Bill Hayton. Today's show was produced by Monica Lillis and researched by Joanna Moser. Our sound engineer was Christy o'. Grady. I'm Andrew Muller here in London. The Daily is back at the same time tomorrow. Thanks for listening.
- [34:46]
C
Sam Sa.