Are you happy? What does it even mean to be happy? Many people think that being happy is the most important thing in life. The U.S. Constitution says that the pursuit of happiness is one of our rights as an American. Even the United Nations thinks that happiness is important. Since 2011, the U.N. has been tracking the happiness of countries around the world in a project they call the World Happiness Index. Here are what they measure happiness on. 1. Spending power. 2. Health and life expectancy. 3. Social support, which means having someone to count on. 4. Freedom to make life choices. 5. Freedom from corruption. 6. How generous one acts and feels. What do you think about this list? Is there anything you would add? What are some things that make you happy? Do you think you can wake up in the morning and just tell yourself to be happy? Do you believe that happiness can be shared by other happy people? There is one man who thinks this way. His name is Johnny Barnes. Johnny Barnes is 88 years old. For over 30 years, Johnny Barnes has been getting up every morning to go and stand on a corner to share his happiness with people who pass by. You're about to watch a video about Johnny Barnes. As you watch it, pay attention to what he says and what others say about him. Pay attention to how he makes others feel. Why do you think Johnny Barnes must get up every morning? Rain or shine? To stand on a street corner and wave at people passing by.


Hello comrades and welcome back to Marxist Voice, the podcast of The Communist, and welcome back to another episode of our series Towards the Revolutionary Communist Party, where we will go over different aspects of building the party in the run-up to the founding congress of the RCP in the May of this year. As always I'm your host, Jack Tye Wilson, and today I'm joined by Fiona Lali, who is a member of the Executive Committee of the soon-to-be Revolutionary Communist Party, as well as a member of the Political Education Committee as well. Hi Fiona, how's it going? Hi Jack, not bad, thanks. How's your week been so far? I know it's only Wednesday, but yeah, had a good Easter weekend. Yeah, pretty good, only day two, so just good. Have you got up too much over the weekend, anything political? Well I actually went to Hans Holbein's exhibition. Holbein was a painter who, he painted the most famous depiction of Henry VIII standing there kind of proudly, as well as, you know, different figures from that period and the monarchy at that time. And it's an interesting exhibition because actually the development of his art and the focus on faces and individuals as a kind of life-like image also reflects part of the changes taking place in Britain at that time and the development of capitalism and the rise of the individual and individualism, which is part of the ideology and was part of the ideology of the rising bourgeois class, the merchants that were starting to step forward at that time. And he was a bit of a special kind of, it was a very new thing basically, the art that he was able to produce. That's incredibly interesting, that sounds like a very cultural weekend. My writer letter for the favour in there. Yeah, you should definitely write something for the culture pages of the Communists that would be excellent. I've actually been very impressed recently with the range of different cultural things that our comrades have been reviewing on those pages. We've had music reviews, theatre reviews, even a ballet review actually as well. So yeah, we're a cultured bunch here at the International Martyrs' Tendency. What can you say? There you go. I also had a bit of a cultural weekend as well. I went to the William Morris Gallery in Walthamstow in London, which I thought was fantastic. It has obviously a lot of his work, design work, the stained glass, the tiles, the tapestries and so on. But I'm sure many comrades might know this, maybe some of them won't know this, but William Morris actually, after spending almost his entire life trying to bring art and beauty into the everyday lives of often middle-class people, I'm sure he would have loved to have stretched that further into the lives of working-class people as well. But actually in his 40s, he turned towards the class struggle. He joined the Marxist organization at the time, the Social Democratic Federation in the 1870s I think, and he broke from his class background and he threw himself into Marxist organizing into revolutionary politics. Yeah, he became a leading member of the SDF and eventually formed a group called the Socialist League with people like Eleanor Marx. And Edward Evelling as well. So yeah, incredibly interesting guy. Do they say that at the exhibition? Yeah, they say all of this at the exhibition actually, but I also bought a volume of his political works as well. So yeah, maybe I'll write a review or something like that in the paper as well because he's a very interesting guy in it. But anyway, let's move on then to something more relevant to the topic of this podcast, although it is nice to get started with a bit of informal chat. So actually yet to start, we heard the following voice message from a guy called Luke who asked a question from the previous episode on finance. He asked the question about membership fees and why we charge so much in terms of membership fees. So yeah, we'll just listen to that now and yeah. Hey, what do you have to say? It's Luke again. I've not gotten to the question. I just wanted to say thanks to Joe and Jack last week for answering my question about finances. And I think I was just thinking about it in the wrong way and you're not trying to mass appeal right now and get the majority of the general public looking for the more serious and disciplined, I suppose determined people that want to do the dirty work or the hard work, I should say, and start a building and growing party. I'm actually going to go to my local Nottingham meeting this weekend, I think. So it'd be good to learn a bit more and maybe join to help out going forward. Cheers. So yeah, that's incredible. Luke, thanks for sending us your feedback and hopefully you enjoy the Nottingham branch and hopefully you join us and join the struggle to build the Revolutionary Communist Party. But yeah, just on that topic, if anyone wants to send in their thoughts on this podcast series, any feedback and especially any questions as well that you'd like us to respond to on this podcast, then please do send them in at communist.red forward slash right and select the category for podcasts. So yeah, Fiona, we're launching the RCP and I think it's a month now, right? It's less than five weeks now. And in this podcast series, we've covered various questions like recruitment, finance, the paper and so on. But today we're going to talk about education. We're going to look at ourselves as communists, as revolutionaries. So yeah, how does education fit into all of this, would you say? Yeah, well, I hope in the other podcast that you've done on this, the comrades haven't said that these aspects of the work, finance, recruitment, paper, the foundation of what they do because of what we do. Because I'm going to say the exact same thing, which is that education is the foundation of what we do. And the reason I say that is because if you think about recruiting, donating monthly subs, donating to the fighting fund, selling the paper, going out, doing all of this activity, what gives us the conviction to do all of that? To donate, to stand on the streets and sell the paper and so on. What gives us the conviction to do those things is the understanding of the relationship between that activity and the actual ideas that we are fighting for. It isn't just a desire to go out there and just talk to random people that makes us sell the paper. It is because we believe and we know that the ideas that we're representing and that we're fighting for are correct and we have to explain them to other people if we want to build the party. We are striving to build a Cader party. And what do I mean by that? What is our emphasis on Cader? So Cader is someone who can go to a different town, go to a workplace, go somewhere else and build a branch of Communists.  We're not interested in a party of people who just sit around and wait for orders, who just sit around as kind of foot soldiers waiting to be told where to go as the movement develops. We're trying to build people up, build Caders who can think for themselves. And the only way to do that is if you really begin to conquer the ideas of Marxism. So actually for us, education is, it's a condition of membership. If you want to join the RCP, you've got to commit yourself to studying, to self-study. And we produce a lot of material in order to equip all of our members and all of our comrades with what they need in order to do that. This year is obviously the Lenin year where we're celebrating, but also looking at and studying very closely the ideas of Lenin, his writings. We've produced the book obviously in defensive Lenin. And this Lenin book is really a bit of a Bible for us this year. This year obviously represents 100 years since his death. There's a whole barrage of propaganda against Lenin and the ideas of communism as a result. And so we're arming our comrades with what they need in order to fight off those attacks. Not just in a defensive manner, we're not just defending Marxism, but we also want to go on the offensive and explain why Marxism ultimately is a superior philosophy, a superior way of understanding and explaining the world. Yeah, I've just finished volume one of the Lenin book myself, actually, about to move on to volume two. And I think it's a real master class, really, in how Lenin conceived of his role in the class struggle, basically. He didn't ever attempt to dilute the program of Marxism or just sort of brush any problems under the carpet. He came across a problem. He came across a tendency within the workers movement, which he saw as being one that would hold the struggle back. He was very conscientious. He studied philosophy, studied economics, and to really clarify what is a scientific program. And he built a party around those ideas. And yeah, I've heard a number of reports, actually, from the branches about how the Lenin book is really inspiring them to go out and get building the RCP. I read a report from Preston. A burgeoning cell in Preston. Yeah, where the communists grew quite a lot in the latter half of last year. But then things kind of maybe stagnated a bit. They lost a few members. But yeah, this year they turned a new page, so to speak, and they really got stuck into the Lenin book every week. They were discussing it, discussing all of the lessons around Lenin's struggle against the economists in Russia, this kind of opportunist tendency within the workers movement, and all these different things. How Lenin built the party, his focus on revolutionary theory. And through that, it's really inspired them to have consistent activity, go out selling the paper, discussing the paper, posturing, recruiting people, and so on. So you can see right there, and encapsulate, I think, what revolutionary theory can do. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, what makes Lenin a particularly outstanding figure was, one, his grasp of Marxist theory, but then his ability to translate that into what are the needs of the working class in Russia at this time, and how do I read the mood of the working class and be able to put forward a program that answers all of those problems. In a recent issue of the In Defense of Marxism magazine, which is our theoretical magazine, there's an article dedicated to how Lenin studied Hegel, and the meticulous notes that he used to make and the way he used to try and decipher Hegel's writings, which can be difficult. And it was that really focused dedication to theory, but then being able to apply that to the movement that made Lenin and ultimately the Bolshevik successful. And that's why we model ourselves off of the Bolsheviks and off of Lenin himself. We need to be able to use the method of Marxism to explain the world around us at our upcoming Congress, the founding Congress of the RCP. We will be discussing and debating on important documents that have been produced. One of the main documents is a theses on Britain, which is which is available online. You can have a look at the communist.red website. Yeah, the draft version of that, which lays out, you know, our analysis of the conditions in Britain at this time and how that relates to the perspectives for revolution in Britain and explains the processes that are taking place and how we as communists, therefore, should try and orientate towards us. That is the real test of how deeply do you understand Marxism and how do you understand Marxist theories? Can you use it today to explain the world around us? Yeah, now definitely recommend all of our listeners to go and read that document. It's actually incredibly short, I would say. It's only about 3,000 words. And it covers so much. It goes across the world situation. It looks at the events in the United States, for example, kind of laying, you know, because obviously British capitalism is ultimately like intimately linked to world capitalism as well. So it goes over all of that. British capitalism, the chronic lack of investment in the economy, the financialization, all of these different things, which lead to ultimately a very stagnant, sick and senile capitalism. And yeah, it goes through the consciousness, the shifting consciousness and so on, the crisis on the political front, the Tories being driven with splits and divides, the bankruptcy of the Labour leaders and so on. So yeah, for a very short document, it really hammers home, you know, all of the key essential points. We have to think about how we can change our thinking, and you know, with the support of the US government. So I think, yeah, I think that is a housing that's very important for us, so I'm actually very interested in thinking about that as well as working class movements. And in the other part of the conversation, we've talked about the engaging together and the things that we do, the people that work in Congress our international, just launched a manifesto, the manifesto of the soon to become revolutionary communist international. And so the Congress will open with a discussion on that manifesto itself. Yeah, and that's also available online as well, isn't it? Yeah, on marxist.com. All of the links to those will be in the show notes of this podcast. So yeah, some might object to all of this talk about theory and say, you know, what's the point in just endlessly discussing these minute details, all of this hair splitting and so on. Because ultimately, does history and philosophy really matter that much when really we should just be out there fighting for the working class, fighting for wage increases, fighting for concrete practical things that will improve people's lives. Maybe collecting for a food bank or something like doing some sort of mutual aid or something like that. Basically isn't theory a waste of time. That is quite a common idea I would say on the left. How would you respond to that? Do you think? Yeah, I think this is a common question that comes up a lot and it can come from a very honest perspective. Sometimes people not immediately understanding or what is the relevance to this? And I'd say first and foremost, if you look at the history of the communist movement or even just the history of the class struggle itself, there've been many different parties and many different organizations that have formed. But the party that stands out above all of them is the Bolsheviks because they were able to take power and part of the reason that the Bolsheviks sustained themselves as an organization because Russia from the period of 1901 all the way up to 917 went through very tumultuous very tumultuous time. There's a revolution in 1905 that ends in defeat, a period of exile and repression I should say. Some of the leading Bolsheviks had to go into exile in that time, including Lenin and so on. But the point is, in tumultuous periods, it's very hard to sustain yourself as an organization. The reason the Bolsheviks were able to do so and claw themselves back is because they had ideological clarity or Lenin in particular tried to insist upon a clear ideological basis to the party and what it represented because look, as communists, we don't exist in a vacuum. Actually, we live in and around, or we live in capitalism, right? So the pressures of bourgeois society and bourgeois ideas and bourgeois philosophy are constantly on us and constantly trying to penetrate the organization. So we have to build, first of all, a sharp wall to clearly demarcate what is Marxist philosophy and what is bourgeois philosophy, the philosophy of post-modernism, the philosophy of individualism and identity politics, which are very, very present and also present on the left in a conscious and a slightly unconscious way. And so we think the way to one, build an organization, but then also to sustain it is to have a clear ideological approach. It's like when you're rowing in a boat and someone's moving the all one way and I don't know if it's an all and someone's moving the all the other way, you're not gonna go forward, you're gonna spin around in circles. And that's what happens to organizations who kind of fetishize eclecticism as though this mishmash of different ideas is somehow going to produce something greater than itself. Of course, discussion, debate, clarification, polemics are absolutely necessary and there's a long history of that in the Bolsheviks, but there's a limit to how that takes place and you need a foundation. And our foundation is very simple. We base ourselves first and foremost on the ideas of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky, the key theoreticians of the communist movement. And we really encourage our own comrades to read those authors and those communists themselves. We use this phrase sometimes, don't read about Marx, read Marx. Don't read what the universities have to say about him or any of these figures. Just go to the source itself and then use what you study to try and understand the world around you. But some might object and many do object. Hasn't society changed quite a lot since the days of Marx or even Trotsky. Trotsky died in 1940 and there's been eight decades that have elapsed since that time. So shouldn't we see someone more modern? Maybe Slavoj Zizek or something like that. Read Aaron Vestani or something for the ultimate luxury communism. What would you say about that? Do we need modern ideas to make sense of a modern world? I think in response to that, I would say that what we need above all is the right ideas rather than endlessly searching for new ideas. This is actually a real feature, I would say, of the worst aspects of academia is the search to be new, to reinvent things, to reinvent the wheel. I'm gonna echo how Alan Woods tends to answer this question, which is that the wheel is a very old idea, very old invention, but it works rather well and we continue to use it. Look, what we have to ask ourselves is are the ideas of Marxism relevant to the world around us? Is what Marx wrote about in the Communist Manifesto 170 years ago, something like that. How does that explain the world around us in terms of the division of society into two great classes, the ruling class and the working class, the concentration of capital to an extreme end and wealth on one pole and complete degradation and misery on the other end. All of the contradictions that Marx explained 170 years ago were relevant then and are even more relevant now. This is something that the manifesto of the RCI explains extremely well. And so that is the most important question. There are very few books or texts from 170 years ago that can explain the world around us today and Marxism. The other point about Marxism is it's not a dogma, right? When we talk about studying these texts or studying these theoreticians, we aren't interested in just narrow interest or academic study, right? And we're not hero worshipers. We study as revolutionaries who actually have work to do. We know that we need to overthrow the capitalist system and we are striving to build socialism. Marxist texts are our theoretical guide to this practical activity. Of course, then as I said earlier, it has to be translated into what is happening today. AI, for example. How do we understand the role of AI and I think there's probably been a podcast. Oh, there is actually, there's just been a podcast on that, on the specter of communism podcast. Our compattoit. I was going to say our sister. Our sister podcast. Yeah, obviously we've got to use the ideas of Marxism to explain the world around us. But a lot of what these modern philosophers, modern academics, modern whatever you want to call them, people do is not actually apply Marxism but try and reinvent a new theory which often ends up a mishmash of bourgeois philosophy and bourgeois ideas to try and satisfy an appetite of just kind of narrow academic, I don't know what you wanna call. There's a phrase that there's nothing new under the sun. And I think that is definitely true with all of these people who try and reinvent the wheel. In fact, I'm reading a text by Len at the moment called Materialism and Imperial Criticism where he's responding to some figures within the Bolshevik party actually who were trying to invent a new philosophy. They were trying to revise Marxism, revise dialectical materialism essentially, putting forward this idea that there's nothing that exists apart from sensation and experience. And we can't really truly know the world, basically. There's no objective reality, very similar to the post-modernists of today. And Lenin spends basically the first chapter of that just saying you think that you're inventing something new but you're actually just resorting to the ideas of people who lived hundreds of years ago, people like Bishop Barkley, a Catholic bishop who wanted to try and disprove materialism from a reactionary point of view. So yeah, I think that's definitely true. You know, everyone who raves and rants about new ideas, they're not really putting forward anything new most of the time and if they are putting forward something new, then it's not very useful. Yes, we can say this debate has been had for a hundred years in the communist movement and every single time the people insisting on new ideas have ended up as revisionist and ended up as people who have abandoned Marxism actually and fallen into some kind of reformism because they end up just, when they say we need to update Marxism, they essentially find themselves in the situation where they're just justifying the existing capitalist system in some way and trying to adapt it in order to not really get to the root of the problem. And so yeah, often wary of people who talk about newness. Yeah, yeah, precisely. Actually, this brings to mind the question that we've received from a listener to the podcast called Louie. Because yeah, obviously, we stand for a set of ideas, Marxist ideas and we're very serious about studying and upholding these ideas. But of course, we aren't the only group on the left. I'm sure there are many other groups that call themselves socialist and communist that also claim to stand for a Marxist program and so on. So I wanna ask you, I wanna hear your thoughts on this. Yeah, Louie asks, what makes us different from these other parties and groups? Can we talk about why the RCP is different and why people should join us instead of these other groups that claim to be Marxist? Look, we are deadly serious about what it is that we're trying to do. We intend to change this world. Lenin famously said of me, and we've used this a lot in the past, but it's worth repeating that without revolutionary theory, there can be no revolutionary movement. And that is precisely what our organization offers in comparison to all of the other groups or whatever on the left. An absolute insistence on ideological clarity, on dialectical materialism as a way to understand the world around us, the philosophy of Marxism and trying to imbue all of that in every single person who joins our organization. I don't believe there's anyone else who can provide that. We come from a long line of important real class fighters and Marxists and communists. I mean, we can trace our organization all the way through to the fourth international. And that's because we've had this serious approach and the serious approach to building an organization and wanting to overthrow capitalism can only come from an absolute conviction in the idea that it is possible and the ideas that we need to do so. And I would say that is the most fundamental difference between us and other groups on the left. Yeah, and as you said, we have this very serious approach to education. So yeah, I guess we should probably conclude things really by discussing, how can listeners at home, whether they're someone who hasn't even joined yet, who's soon to join, or even if they're a secretary of a branch or something like that or a leading comrade, what can they do really to hit the ground running with their communist education in the run up to the Congress? What kind of resources, what kind of support can we provide in order to kickstart their communist education basically? Yeah. The best thing about joining an organization and joining our organization is you're joining something bigger than yourself that has a lot of history and has had many comrades who over many, many years have studied the ideas of Marxism. And through that process, we have been able to create an immense archive, but also kind of, how should I describe it? Treasure trove is a phrase we like to use, of material, right? In order to aid people in their journey, in their self-study for Marxism. So on our website, we have many, many reading guides to accompany you when you're reading some of these texts with helpful questions, helpful prompts. We also have a whole section to our website that's dedicated to theory, going through the classics, philosophy, history, historical materialism, Marxist economics, but also huge important concepts like the state. How do we, as communists relate to the state, how do we want to smash it? Other ideas on the left, like anarchism, but also looking at things that people, that maybe motivate people in their journey towards coming to Marxism, like the fight against oppression and so on and so forth. So we have curated on our website and also just generally through the organization, important kind of bite-sized sectionings of how to approach different elements of society using Marxist theory. And I would say part of the benefits of a full-time apparatus is that time can be and has been spent curating this material, but also with all of that material and there's a lot out there and it can be overwhelming, I would say the most important thing is that anything you pick up to read any podcasts that you listen to, any video that you watch is that you must discuss those ideas that you come into contact with somebody else with another comrade. And then actually the best way to learn is to teach others. You don't have to be the most well-rounded expert in all elements of Marxism and Marxist theory in order to go out there. The best thing to do is to get a bit of a grip of the ideas and then go out and try and teach them to other people because it's in that process that you'll clarify it for yourself and also that you'll build the party, right? It's really important to emphasize this point that we aren't interested in people who want to recite pages and pages of Marxist literature but cannot or will not translate that into the reality of people's lives and go out and talk to people. That is the real test of how well have you understood Marxism and how well have you grasped this theory. So, you know, grab those books, grab a subscription to the iDOM, check out the website, check out all of the videos and then find another comrade who you can discuss all of that out with and go to that comrade with questions and they will hopefully have the answer to them. And if that person doesn't, there's probably another person in the organization who does. That's the benefit of being a part of an organization as big as ours with the history that it has as well. Yeah, I just really want to underscore just how much educational material that we produce here at the RCP. I mean, it actually is, I think, quite overwhelming sometimes to just see the vastness of what we produce. I mean, you've mentioned the Education Hub. I think there are about 16 different sections on the Education Hub, which comprise short articles, longer articles, reading guides, podcasts, videos, book recommendations and so on. We've got the Indefensive Marxism Magazine which comes out quarterly every three months. That's an international bulletin basically of communist education with articles that are curated and developed over a long period of time by our international leadership. The latest issue was on Lenin, but we've had previous issues on questions like historical materialism, women's oppression, that the Enlightenment, for example, I think the next issue is gonna be very interesting on the topic of Africa. It's gonna have articles, I think, covering Lenin's DCs on the colonial question, France Fanon and an evaluation of his life and ideas, as well as various struggles that have taken place on the African continent, including Ethiopia in the 70s and so on. Really in-depth ideas that sometimes are on things that are quite general and quite applicable to our everyday work, but other times as well, can often be on topics that are slightly less talked about and can actually really arm our comrades on things that people generally don't know much about, I would say. So yeah, that's a very valuable resource. Our paper, every issue has center pages covering various different things, whether it's current events and current issues like the role of the United Nations, for example, or going back into history and looking at the role that Lenin played during the February Revolution. These are all things that we've covered recently in the center pages of the Communist. We also have a bookshop as well, which produces pamphlets, books, everything, starting from the classics of Marxism, which is one of our most popular purchases, which goes through things like the Communist Manifesto, Lenin's State and Revolution, Trotsky's Transitional Program, different basic texts around economics, strategy, and so on. Books like What is Marxism as well, which I would say, to this day, one of the best in reductions to Marxist theory, but yeah, really, anything under the sun that you can imagine, we will probably have a book on that, on wellreadbooks.co.uk. So definitely check that out. But yeah, I would say theory really saturates every aspect of our organization. Every week, for example, our branches and cells, we don't just go straight into organizational administrative things like, oh, when can everyone make a paper sale, when can everyone do posturing and so on? Filling out spreadsheets about paper sales and stuff like that. Having meticulous organization, obviously, is very important, but every single branch meeting always starts with a theoretical political discussion. Last night, my branch discussed the lessons of the Paris Commune. What did your branch discuss this week? We discussed the state, actually. Perfect. Yeah, it was very good. And then after that, we'll discuss current events. We'll discuss events in the news from a Marxist perspective. So everything is geared towards raising our political level, having a better understanding of the world. And that really is the bedrock of all that we do. Can I just add something to that? Yeah, of course you can. I really wanna make this point that the world right now is in a huge, it's in a deep crisis, right? We make this point, capitalism is in its deepest ever crisis and that's expressing itself economically, but also socially. And I think so many people feel this overwhelming sense of dread and doom at the deep convulsions that are happening. For us, as Marxists, theory really is the kind of the anchor to our position in the world and how we understand what is taking place. If you are trying to make sense of the seeming barbarism, violence, just the complete senseless, what feels like evilness that is coming over the world is place that in a certain historical context, which is the deep crisis that capitalism is in and what that is producing, which is a lot of inequality and war and oppression. We can make sense of that because of our study of Marxist theory and also our study of history. And so I would really encourage people to find refuge in Marxist theory as a way to make sense of the world around them because without it, the world is a scary place and then a confusing place and there is a huge sense of dread, but actually a study of theory and then the class struggle itself gives us optimism because it's explained to us what do we need to do, right? What do we need to do in order to end the horror, the barbarism, the violence, and the chaos of the capitalist system? Theory is our guide to action and that is the most important role that it plays in our organization. Yeah, I think that's a good note to end on, I would say. But just before we end the podcast, let's go over a few quick announcements. So yeah, if you've been listening to this podcast series as well as our other podcast episodes and you agree with what you have to say and you're inspired by our campaign to found the Revolutionary Communist Party, then yeah, we need your help to do this. It's not enough to just listen to us or follow us on social media. You need to roll your sleeves up and get involved in building the party. So wherever you are, whether you're in Britain or anywhere across the world, get involved in the Revolutionary Communist Party and get involved in the Revolutionary Communist International as well. If you sign up on our website, the link will be in the show notes of this podcast, we will get in touch with you immediately and provide you with the support and the resources that you need to set up a cell or a branch wherever you are in your workplace, your university, your school, anywhere at all. And we will guide you along the way to building a bona fide branch of the RCP. We're aiming to have 2,000 members by the end of this year in time for a crisis-ridden Starmer government and all of the radicalization and struggle that will bring with it. And yeah, the whole situation hinges upon whether we can build a communist leadership in time for these class rules. So yeah, join us and if you're maybe not ready to join us quite yet and there's still other ways that you can support us, take out a subscription to our newspaper, The Communist, as well as our magazine and Defensive Marxism. And you can also donate to us as well. We would highly appreciate a regular donation that's towards us on a monthly basis or you can donate to our special party launch fund. We're trying to raise 20,000 pounds in time for the founding Congress of the RCP in a month's time. Yeah, so yeah, definitely check out our website where you can find links to subscribe and donate to us. But yeah, with all of that said, thanks very much to our listeners for tuning into the podcast. Make sure you send in your questions, your reports and your feedback to us at communist.red forward slash write and we might include it on the next episode of the podcast. And yeah, make sure you stay subscribed to the podcast for future episodes covering revolutionary theory, revolutionary history, current events and party building. Brought to you by the Communist.


I've added some slides that are just short to explain what we will do in the hands-on. We will run the boards, the MCU first on the LDO, and then after two seconds it will switch over to the S&PS supply. And then after two seconds again we will continue on the S&PS and we will power down the flashback too. And then we will enter the stop-to mode with full SRAM retention. And we will measure the power consumption in all these six steps. And after that we will wake up from the RTC with S&PS running, supplying the V-Core. And we will have some led driver stage here on and we will have the SRAM 4 retention on only. And then after that we will go down to stop-mode and here only keep the SRAM 4 retention. So in this case we have full SRAM retention and here we have only SRAM 4 and we can see the difference in power consumption. So for that there is some code we will add, I found it a little bit easier to just explain shortly here about the code, how to do it. So we will start, the MCU will always start on LDO. So we will just start to have a delay of two seconds and measure the power consumption then. And then we will switch over to S&PS, like number two here. And then after two seconds we will enable power down mode for flashback too. And then after that we will prepare the RTC. So we will have the RTC to wake up us after the step stop-2 mode after two seconds. So case number four is we're full SRAM retention. And after when we're waking up there from to case number five, we will run again with the led driver stage on so the led will light. And we have not changed so we have only the SRAM 4 retention. So here we are actually closing all the other RAM parts that can consume some current. So in the last step here I want to go into the while loop. We will still run on this but then we will go to stop-2. So actually down here we will go to stop-2 and under RAM 4 retention. So RTC is running and waking up every two seconds. So here we can see the low power really in this point. And hopefully we will have something like this and this I will come back to later on. So let's get started with the hands on now. So you can follow up in the sheet sheets. We have the different step here, start the project, some QBMX configuration. We have the QBID code and then we will start the power monitor later on here. But I prefer to show you when I do this so I start the QBMX. So we are starting choosing in the MCU like we have done in the morning. And we will again select MCU. So we choose that one and we will get the question about trust zone shortly. Here it comes. And we will choose without trust zone again. And we will now put the eye cache to direct map it cast. So it's one way. So that is the first. So now I'm in the slide one of five in the section 2.3 if you would like to follow. So we go into the eye cache here, choose that one. And we change the mode to one way. And we also would like to put the GPIO to the green led. And that on this board is assigned to the PC7. So PC7 we have here. So I click left click on that one and I just choose GPIO outputs. That one. And we get it here. PC7 as an output. OK. The RTC we will activate. So I go down in the list here but the peripherals click on the RTC. And here we will activate the clock source and also the wake up possibility we will configure to internal wake up. So now we have not to see that we'll wake up on the internal wake up. And now we just need to set some parameters. So we go down to the configuration window, parameter settings. And here in the wake up clock we can choose one hertz. And we would like to wake up every two seconds so we have time to measure. So we change the wake up count to two. And the NVIC settings we need also go into here. And we will tick the enable box. So actually now we have done the configuration we need. We go over to the project. We will have default clock configuration here and this and so on. So we move over to the project manager. And here we put the name to the project U5 mode, for example. And it will come and confirm into our workspace. Yes, for sure. We should change this to QBID. So now we have the tool chain for QBID. Let's go again. OK. So now we have code successfully generated. So we open the project. And now we will come into the QBID. Ask again about the workspace.  So I will move over here shortly. Here it comes. So here we are. So now we have come into QBID. And the first I will do is to close the old project here as it was open. So here we have the right one. We do need to do some changes here. So first we will change the link description file. So I open this one. And there's some copy code in slide two, QBID code in slide two. Here we are. So now we will change so all defined RAM will be the SRAM4. So we have all everything in SRAM4 that we will keep retained over the hands on. So we will just change the setup of the RAM and Flash addresses. So copy code here. And we go down in the Flash link description file. Actually here, the line, let's see, is it right, line 45, yes, here it is here. Now everything will be placed in SRAM4 through this. And now comes the next step here. Let's see if it's coming up here. Yes, if you look on the slide number three, there is something about the vehicle range. And I check this and this function call that is setting it to scale four is already implemented. So if you go into the main.c into line 123, there's no action either here. So here is the function call that change it to what the scale for. So there is no action on this one. Slide number three. So we continue to slide number four. And here comes now the whole software that we should copy in. And if you scroll down, sorry, if you scroll down on slide number four, you will see all the calls here. So you can just short check here. We will first have a two seconds delay so we can measure in LDO because it's starting up from reset in LDO. Then we change this in PS and wait two seconds so we can have a graph so we can measure that one. And then we switch off the bank two, wait two seconds. And now we enable the low power mode starting up the RTC. So we have a wake up timer for these two seconds. And we enter a stop mode too. And then we will also disable the retention for the S1 pages and all the other iCache, Dcache, DMA2, Dayram and all other peripherals for that we don't use. So I press copy code here. And we go into the main before I should go to the user code begin to. So that is line 98 in my code here, 98. And I paste in code I just copied on the sheet sheet. So here you see the code we go through is here now. And we should also go to the next step here and that's we should have some code in the while one loop. So we continue waking up and go to sleep to stop two. So this part here will stay inside the while one loop. Yeah, it's about the wake up time and stop two modes. So you will see it clear very soon here. So we copy that. And now it should be around line 143. Use the code begin free. Oh, I put it. Yeah, the intention is to sleep it to B, but it doesn't matter. So we have now the code inside the while one loop. And we should be ready now for a compiled. So let's hit the hammer. Okay, so now we have a compiled application code here. And now we should do some more steps in Qtube ID. We should disable the debug possibilities. So we go into the window to the run debug. So I'm going to get one here. Now we should go on this one here and debug configurations. And this you can close. And I know that you can then. I cannot type that now. Let's see. And double click on the STM32 Cortex-M. This one? Yeah, it means you've never run it. You've only ever done a run now. You've never opened a config for debug. Just a tip, if you were to have highlighted left clicked on the top level project name and then selected it, it would have picked it up automatically. Okay, so here we should go to the debugger. And in this here now we should disable under device settings, device settings here. Debug in lower power modes. Here we should disable this. So we don't have that running when you should measure the current consumption. And also I've seen some problems to have this out. So I normally go down to like 8,000 kilohertz for this one, for the interface of the IDB. Just to be sure we don't need to have it out too. We can have it that one and we can apply and then we can press debug. And now we are through. Wait for the back connection, yes. Okay, down that very fact successfully. What we also should do now is to stop how it's running here, so we should stop it here. So we terminate just to avoid extra power consumption here because it's still running on the board. So now we should step over here and we should go for the cube monitor session here. So now we should use the second board we have sent to you, the L562 discovery board. And this board we will use as a power shield. We will measure power consumption, the power current consumption for the first board, the U5 board. So here is the board and I think you have maybe already have a look into the board. There is, if you look to it and have the display in facing you, there is a switch one that you should be in the right position in this picture. Otherwise, you can have some extra consumption from the L5 from the board here. And also we should switch, we should move this jumper here. I think it's in default mode position here to the right. So you should switch it to the second from left. There should be one open to the left. And on this side here, you should connect the USB cable as well. And then it should start up the board. We should also, we have sent you this small wires and that we should use now. Preferable the blue one into the ground position. So if you turn the board around, you will see this connector C in 20, the white connector with four pins. And the most to the right is the ground. So preferable put the blue one there. And then pin number three, we should connect to the U5 board later on, but not really now, we should make calibration before. So just put it in to the connector here, the two wires. And we continue next slide. Keep these wires in the air. You can twist them around each other. And we should open the tube monitor. First, let's see the monitor. Here we go. We will make an calibration right now. Now when you have power up the L5 board, it shows up here. Yeah, the comports, virtual comports. You choose that one and then you press take control. And from that, we will now do a calibration if we step to the next tail. This is just one, if you don't find any virtual comports, you might press on the LCD screen to just get it starting and then it should pop up again. I have never had this issue on my side here, but in case of, but now we come to the calibrate. So I have the wires open, not connected to the USB right now and press calibrate, and let's you get a short sign box there. And that's fine. And now it comes to picture again, how to connect. So we were here on the L5 board pin number one, it's up here, so that one. So that is the ground. Now we connect that to the U5 board up in this corner. There's two pins that is ground. So one of these two you can use the ground for the blue one. And when you had done that, you can remove the jumper five, that's the position here, and connect the red cable wire between this pin number three to the left pin of these two, pin number two. You can also use an DMM multimeter here, just connect them on the jumper five to measure. And then of course you need to put it into the microamps connector and the black one, the common. So the next state now is that we should go over to the cube monitor program and here we should select the sampling frequency to 10,000. We have 10,000. And acquisition time, we click the infinity. And then we can start acquisition. I will just connect myself here. So maybe we get something like this. And we can first, yes, and then you can stop. Because you just start and stop it and we will change the X axis here. So we click here on this symbol here for settings. And the first one, I've set the axis. We can adjust the window size to around 20 seconds. This is quite good, here around something. So now we have from zero up to 20. And now we can actually start again. And we see that we have something happening here. Now it's in the wild one loop because it's running for a while. But by pressing the black button, the reset button on the UPI board, I will show you here again if we go back here. Here's the black one, that is the reset. So by pressing that one, you will start over the program. So I press it now and you will see it goes up here. So here comes the reset. And now it will get through. So I will stop it when this comes over here somewhere. I will stop it. We can do some measurement and stop it. So here we have from the reset with something like here. It goes two seconds here. We change to, this was LDO mode. Here is the SNPS mode and so on. So just to show you how to measure the current that can also be a little bit. In this program here, we press show report. And then you get, yeah, you can see the data behind here. This is the full scale here on this side. And here is the selected timeframe.  And then you will zoom this in. And then you will see the current in average here. Was that clear or should I do it again? You can always go back by pressing show all. Now I got the whole here, but you can do it in a way here. So I will do a new measurement here.   And now we have here the LDO phase mode and here we have the SNPS. Now we switch off the flash bank and have we got stop mode and then we wake up again. So up till here it's interesting for us. So we stop here now before it's go out to the screen here. So if I show you this picture here, as we said, when we started from reset, we go in and run mode with LDO operation.   But still the S1's retention is on. So we have, we will reach quite low value here, but then we wake up again from the RTC.  We have the LED driver enabled on, but not the current for the LED is not counted in this because it's supplied from the VDD. So it's outside our measurements. And then we come to the interesting part and it's about this top two mode. And here we have the SRAM4 retention. Only that one is tension and the RTC, of course. So you can see how we should reach around four microamps. And if I look into this here, we have LDO, SNPS, SNPS without flash bank two, stop mode, full retention of SRAM, run mode with LED driver on. And here comes the interesting part. And this is stop two and SRAM4 retention. So if I pick up a part here to measure, you see that we come down to around four microamps. And that's the same as we have done before here. So you can see, if you measure from the different parts, which I did for a couple of days ago, I make it with a shield and also with a DMM. You see here on the first with only LDO, we have around 500 microamps and going down to the SNPS. We go down even more than 50%. And then with the flash bank two off, we go reduced in further one, 40 microamps around. And you see here in the stop two modes with the full SRAM retention, it comes down to around seven, eight microamps. And the last stop two mode with only SRAM4, we are down to around four microamps. That's, you can play around with this, but this is a way we can do the measurement of the current consumption for the different modes with this application program somewhere. And I hope you can see the benefits from all this power modes they have on the U5. So actually I think that's, yes, we have the picture here. Yes, another step that you can add. You see that it's a little bit like a saw triangle waveform, but it's due to the slow power regulation operation. So it becomes in this way. And here you can see also about the led I was talking about. It's only the current from the MCU that's driving this transistor here. So the current from the LED goes from the 3.3 volt. So it's not measured. It's on this side we're measuring.


Well good afternoon thank you for your time. What I'd like to do is read into the record the statement that I put out and from my perspective I don't think I can add too much to that but after that simply answer any questions you have or endeavor to anyway. Today I was issued with a traffic infringement notice for exceeding the speed limit of 60 kilometers an hour by 10 kilometers an hour when traveling at 70 kilometers an hour in Main Street Kangaroo Point at 8.25 p.m. on Friday the 3rd of February 2012. At the time I was driving my contract based service vehicle and was traveling to police headquarters in relation to service related matters. I accept responsibility for this infringement and today have paid the traffic infringement notice which is a fine of $133 in one demerit point off my driver's license record. I was aware that the section of roadway was a 60 kilometer an hour zone that was not consciously or deliberately aware of exceeding the speed limit at the time and whilst it is no excuse I can only attribute this breach on my part to a lapse of concentration at the time. The detection was from a fixed speed camera and whilst not specifically aware of where it was I was aware that it there was one in that general area. I sincerely regret this occurrence and I apologize to my colleagues in the Queensland Police Service and the broader community. I also acknowledge the support of the media to myself and the Queensland Police Service in our combined efforts to reduce the road toll and might I say that's one point that I'm particularly disappointed in myself about that the police department and myself personally have had wonderful support from the media in terms of this very worthwhile area and again that's regrettable. The most important issue for me though is that all of our efforts mine and many many others that that work in relation to endeavouring to reduce the road toll continues unabated and despite this breach I am and I remain genuinely committed to reducing the road toll and I hope to obviously stay involved in that area even after I retire ultimately from the Queensland Police Service. That in essence is the statement that I've put out both internally and publicly and as I said I'll endeavour to take any questions you have. Commissioner did you see the camera flash at all or did it just come as a surprise when you got the ticket in Mark? No I didn't see the camera flash I had no awareness whatsoever of this and it was brought to my notice that there might be an issue last Friday but that further enquiries would have to be made this week which they were. Yesterday those enquiries established that my vehicle had in fact driven you know through the speed camera at a speed of 70 on the 60 zone and the matter was handled internally by the Deputy Commissioner or Deputy Commissioner Ian Stewart. He asked me yesterday if I had been the driver at the time which I had so subsequently the processing of this matter continued. Late yesterday afternoon I was advised that a traffic infringement notice would be issued in all probability this morning which it was and when it was issued I comprised the statement that I've just read out to you and paid the ticket as well. Yes certainly I received one in 1998 which was the ESP cameras came in when I was the Assistant Commissioner in Far North Queensland based at Cairns. I received one in 2004 which wasn't for speeding that was for following two closely I can explain that further if you wish. I received one in 2009 while I was in holidays in New South Wales in terms of a similar type of speed. This is the only speeding ticket that I have received in Queensland in the 11 years and three months that I've been the Police Commissioner. I'd say it could be better it's not perfect but I will say to you I want to be really careful here that under no circumstances do I want you to think that in any way I'm making excuses but on every occasion in particularly this last occasion I have not consciously deliberately intentionally ever been speeding. It's been circumstances where I've either been in a zone and as the woman was in Cairns where I thought the speed limit was a certain speed limit and was wrong but I give you an assurance that I have not consciously intentionally or deliberately exceeded the speed limit or broken the traffic regulations at any time. I hope the people will be understanding in terms of that space that this is human error on my part and wasn't deliberate or intentional. I recognise though and I'm very acutely aware of the fact that I am in a fortunate and privileged position and that when I talk about the importance of not speeding I genuinely believe that and believe in it and that there is an expectation of me and so there should be that's higher than it would be for others so I can only repeat that I would ask for people's acceptance that this was a genuine mistake and wasn't intentional or deliberate. Oh enormously so. That goes with the aspect of being in this fortunate and quite privileged position to represent the 15,000 people in the Queensland Police Service and to have the support of the media particularly in terms of getting the rates safety message out so I feel as though I've let you down, I feel as though I've let my colleagues down, I feel as though I've let the community down but that's happened I can't get back and change that now as much as I'd like to of course. Media conference after they've had a 10 period an hour speeding ticket though. Yes look and I'm not a hypocrite and can I say to you that I have said in the past that it requires concentration when you're driving and I have said in the past that with modern motor vehicles it's very easy to go from 60 to 70 that can happen momentarily but I've also said in the past that you know you need to concentrate on your driving and that we as a broader community and I still believe this need to change our driving habits and we're a long way away from doing that but I think that that change hopefully will occur into the future and but what I mean by that is we need to be in a space and I haven't said a very good example of this obviously on this case but we need to be in a space where we see the maximum speed limits as the maximum speed limits so that if it is a 60 speed limit if we're doing 58 or 59 we need to be thinking well you know I'm getting close to the maximum speed limit I think it's probably true to say though that that isn't the case in our contemporary society and that's where I think the improvement needs to go to in the future. Is this a sort of press conference you've sort of dreaded all day I think that prepare to come and do this? Obviously it is in a sense look the worst thing that can happen for me as the police commissioner is when one of my people has killed a badly injured that's that's unite me you know that that happens and sadly given the dangerous work of policing that does happen from time to time so I want to keep this in perspective as well but it's always been a fear of mine that that this could happen one day you know I mean I have hands-free but I'm on the phone a lot when I drive and again I'm not I don't recall if I was on the phone at the time it wouldn't matter if I was or I wasn't it's still no excuse of course but it is something that that I've been mindful of and concerned about that that one day that could happen and of course now it has happened you know. Does this make the road dominance harder for you to sell would you pull back and leave that to someone else with I guess an unblemished driving record? Look I would hope not my commitment remains absolute and and I can assure you as genuine and sincere I hope that people will accept that I am genuine and sincere about that and that what has happened here is that I've made a mistake an unintentional mistake but nonetheless a mistake I've done two things I've paid the fine and I have told you about it you know which I believe I should have I don't there's nothing special in my doing that in either count you know I mean I've got no excuse and so I should pay the fine and give them again the fortunate position that I have and privileged position that I have you've got to take the the bad with the good and it was right and proper to to get public about it certainly doesn't give me any joy but coming back to your specific question I would hope not and I would hope that people because I want to continue personally to support this cause I want the police department and I believe we will absolutely support this cause it's a really important one and the significant thing about it is it's an area where we can make change and we have seen change occur and I think that changes evolutionary and I think it continued to get we can still do better than than where we are at the moment and where we were not last year but the year before in 2010 was quite remarkable for a state our size in terms of the rate on I think that that is that goes with the territory for all of us now we have rules we have laws and I think that we have reasonable tolerances in Queensland in terms I think the enforcement of our traffic regulations is done with a sense of balance and fairness and reasonable tolerance so it's not I guess appropriate then to say that we feel sorry for people we're clear in our messaging we say and I have said that we should stick to the speed limits we say and I have said that excessive speed puts you at greater risk of being involved in a traffic crash I believe those things to be true so I can't retreat from them now do you usually have a driver yeah quite often yeah yeah I this was probably a slightly unusual day and on this particular day I didn't there was someone else with me in the vehicle but perhaps I should explain that we'd been at Kedron and I was giving I wanted to return to headquarters I'd started my day in Cairns that day and of course as you'll recall that was the time when the floodwaters were heading towards St George and it was over that weekend that from memory the evacuation order was given I wanted to come back to headquarters I was giving a lift to a senior sergeant he wanted to go back to headquarters as well I was going to go on the inner city bypass but it was blocked off so as a result you can't turn around there so I ended up in the Clem seven took the East Brisbane exit came back around and ended up of course on the Story Bridge so I perhaps should explain to you what I was doing in Main Street Kangaroo Point whilst traveling from Kedron to Brisbane the headquarters here yes that was a minor traffic accident I bumped into the back of the vehicle in front of me it it was one where because I was driving a police car police vehicle has to be reported under our rules it was adjudicated the adjudication was that I'd been following the other car too closely I was given a ticket for that and I paid the ticket oh that's possible but again that's no excuse lots of people have things on their mind when they're driving vehicles and one of the points I make over and over again is that when you're driving you should concentrate on your driving you know and that should be primary in in in your thinking you know and that's true it is you know so it may well have been the case that I was thinking about other things and that's quite possible but again there's no excuse whether you're on the phone or not could you see a day in Queens they wear hands-free phone may not be allowed just because you are concentrating on the phone whether you're on hands-free or not you know for what it's worth I think that's a really good question and look I don't know what the research says on that I know that sometimes I live here at night and I go home and it's about a half hour drive I live on the south side and I'm on the phone from the moment I leave here to the moment I get home and sometimes I wonder about that myself that that is even hands-free justifiable in terms of driving and does using a hands-free phone impair at all your driving concentration the jury is still out on that but it may well be that into the future there is it at the moment it's quite legal to do that and certainly for many of us and certainly myself it's an incredibly valuable use of your time you know but it may well be that at some time in the future research indicates that even hands-free does reduce your driving concentration and legislators then would have decisions to make in that space well no they're your words not mine all I'm saying is that that for many of us you know hands-free mobile phone is a wonderful use of time that enables you you know to to use your phone while you're driving and in my case I'm often getting calls and you know being briefed on things and and that aspect is relevant all I'm saying is that to my understanding and I might be corrected on this but to my understanding there is no definitive research that says that using hands-free mobile phone impairs your driving but that if that if in the future there is research that proves that be on any shadow of a doubt then that would be a matter for our legislators to decide as to whether they would ban hands-free any mobile phone use in a vehicle it's a um Holden statesman and no it's a six no I've got one point which is the point I've got today no I don't I want them to is as strange as it might seem in my circumstances what I want people to do is to drive to the speed limits I want what I would like to see is ultimately over time that we change your driving behaviors but I truly think that's years away what I would like to see is a situation where people truly drive to the speed limit and we don't have that bit of give and take that we seem to have now and that's just not for me on this occasion but that's generally um so I think we're a way away from that but but why I believe in this is if I can I just explain to you why why I think this is so important and that is this speed cameras came in in 1998 in 1997 the road tolling Queensland was 360 in 1998 the speed cameras came in it was 279 so it was 81 less than it was in 1997 in 2010 we introduced covert speed cameras and in 2009 the road toll was 330 and in 2010 it was 249 again 81 less than it was the year before now you look at that and you think why how could that be and the only possible reason would be in my view because in 1998 most people slowed down because of the introduction of speed cameras and in 2010 people I think again slowed down because we've brought in covert or undercover type police mobile speed cameras because you just can't have those sort of reductions you know without there being some reason so to me the message that sends us we all slowed down you know and stuck to the speed limits then the road toll would reduce and yeah that's my answer that is I have made a mistake here I acknowledge that I deeply regret it and my point as I mentioned earlier it wasn't done deliberately intentionally or knowingly but I should have been concentrating better and I accept that question I guess a separate but related issue this is obviously a traffic incident that the police have taken action you know immediately and there's been quite a public expose I suppose of it we were on the story yesterday of an incident in Woodridge three weeks ago where a truck and a car were involved in a road raid incident I suppose and the truck's clearly visible banging into this particular car three or so times that video the information with the statements been handed to police and there's been nothing happened in that three week period is it slightly hypocritical I guess that something happens immediately today and yet it's such a major incident you know which a car's been total while it's put at risk nothing's happened could I come back to you with more detail on that but my my understanding of that and I don't have a comprehensive knowledge of that matter is that it may well be that identification is the current issue there obviously we believe we know who the owner of that vehicle is but that's not enough and that matter is under investigation and it may well be that identification is the issue there so I wouldn't want you to think that nothing happened and isn't being done but obviously we must work in within the boundaries of what we're able to do but can I come back to you with more detail on that yeah but I had just the issue was who was driving the car is that perhaps the hold up in that's that was my point thank you that that that matter is being investigated we believe we know who the owner of that vehicle is that's not the critical point there the critical point is who was the driver and then being able to identify that person and and it's my understanding that that may be the difficulty but I'd like to confirm that and if I could come back to you afterwards on that yeah and if can I say to you that our processing in terms of these matters is speeded up and my understanding is that other people who would have got speed camera infringements around the same time as I did are also receiving their tickets in the next day or so as well okay was there any other matter that anyone would like to raise thank you for being here today and if there is any follow-up matter please contact police


Welcome back from that report, let's get into the crux of the matter as we look at the solutions to the power issue in the country. My guest, Dr. Engineer Ido'u Oyubanjo, is a renowned power system engineer. He is a Fellow of the Nigerian Society of Engineers, FNSE, Fellow of the Nigerian Institution of Power Engineers, Fellow of the Nigerian Institution of Electrical and Electronic Engineers, and the Chartered Power Systems Engineer from the UK. Ido'u has distinguished himself in the power sector, both in Nigeria and the UK, where he worked meritoriously for over a decade. He is the former Chief Technical Officer, FGN Power Company of Nigeria appointed by former President Mohamed Buhari for the Presidential Power Initiative, PPI, popularly known as the Siemens Project. He is now the Managing Director, EATFUN, Power Engineering Consultants Limited. He is Mr. Power System because he has his BSE, MSC, and PhD in Power Systems from the University of Manchester United Kingdom. Good morning to you Mr. Oyubanjo, thanks for joining us on Business Insights. Thank you very much Justin, I'm very happy to be with you and my welcome regards to our viewers all over the world. Thank you. Let's just get straight into it, because there are myriads of challenges, you know, the devlin power and the electricity sector in the country, but specifically, let me just put it plainly, what exactly are the main problems with our power sector? Thank you very much for that. Just as you have said, there are myriads of problems with the power sector in Nigeria because for the last 60 years or more, we have not been able to have uninterrupted power supply. This must be a real challenge. But something that has been in existence for over 100 years can never be unsolvable. So we have complex issues, but the problem of the Nigerian power sector cannot be taken in isolation of the Nigerian problem. So it has to be viewed in the context of the Nigerian problem. I would just mention the most critical problems because I cannot, in a session like this, cannot see the juggernaut of conundrum of problems in the electricity sector in Nigeria. But I would take these very four important ones, and then in subsequent discussions, we talk about the solutions. One, the most critical problem we have now is the mismatches in the electricity value chain. And that means you have generation of up to 13,000 megawatts installed capacity. I'm not talking of available capacity, but installed can be used. But we can, we have a transmission capacity of about, from latest results from TSDN, transmission from Nigeria, 8,000 megawatt. I'm not talking of the viewing capacity, which is just about 5,500 that they have done magazine in the last few years. We have a distribution capacity that is, that could be up to 11,000 megawatt, but we are only able to wield 3,500 to 400,000 megawatts. So these three numbers are huge mismatches. The 13,500 megawatt generation, about 5,500 viewing capacity of transmission, and about 3,500 getting through the distribution system to Nigerians. So those three numbers are not matching, and they should never have happened. And they occurred due to historical systemic failures. So let me stop on that one. So that is mismatches. The second one, and that's very important, is the lack of effective coordination. Now, this coordination I'm talking about is in various aspects. It's in aspects of governance, it's in the aspects of contracts, it's in the aspects of, it's in the aspects of what we call protection system coordination, so there is lack of protection system coordination. It's in the aspect of monitoring and evaluation. So that's the second problem. And this particular problem is key, because if you have investments in the power sector not coordinated in a way that one project is tied to the other and they are looked at end to end, you will have a network that is disjointed, a power system that is disjointed. The third problem that I would like to talk about is the lack of adequate metering. If you don't have metering in any power system, you are not running a power system effectively.  This is a huge setback for any power system. So I'm glad that the current administration, the renewable agenda has clear policies to tackle all of this. The last one is the cost-repleted tariff or versus the service-based reflective tariff. So I believe those four, they are critical. Okay. All right. I haven't mentioned these four issues that you just talked about. Let me just quote something that you said in the wake of this decentralized power system. You said in one of your write-ups that the centralized power system is the fastest way to develop and industrialize Nigeria. Just last year, President General Bush signed a given pass to stage to actually get into the value chain of electricity power systems in the country. So how far can the states go in terms of selling this stuff to Nigerians per se as possible so that we can actually have effective and enough efficient and adequate power supply to the state levels? You talked about several market models. You've mentioned the state electricity markets. Can you just maybe throw more light on that, please? All right. Thank you. You are right. The renewable agenda in the policy document already made provision for the electricity act and it was signed, as you said, the night of June 2023 and this, as I said, is the fastest way to industrialize Nigeria and make power available and serve the electricity supply problem. So there are so many models that the states can follow. One, the state governments can establish the electricity markets and do something like we saw in Abia state recently. You remember, I also wrote the article about what's happening with geometric power as it did the independent power project. So such an example of IPP is a model that states should embark upon. What Nigerians should be doing now is knocking on the doors of their state governments and asking, look, establish our electricity market. Let us do what geometric has done. But this is a medium-term solution because it could take about three years without any insurance, without any Nigerian factor, if I may say, if there's anything like that, without any showstopper, it could take about three years to do such a medium-term solution. So I will talk about the short-term solution that can happen within six months to one year. But this one you have asked me is a medium-term solution where the states can get an enabling environment for private investors, states to never try to be involved other than to provide the enabling environment and support the private sector. So they will do IPPs like NABAC if you take about three years. Another thing is to do what we call franchising. The federal government and state governments will put in their laws policies around franchising the network so that private sector investors will come in, partner with the dispose and make sure they provide supply to areas of the network. And for areas that there is no network, they can, of course, build new networks. So that is another area that they can do. Then there will be regional grids. Regional grids means that, for example, the southeast region, the states in the southeast region, we connect their power grid together, surplus is in one area, will be shared with the others. The states in the northwest, northeast, southwest, and all the other regions will do the same. Now the beautiful thing is that since we already have this transmission system, it's linking them all. So if there is a surplus from Shiroro or from the northeast or from the northwest, it can easily be transferred to demand anywhere that is necessary. But first of all, it will satisfy the state, it will satisfy the region, and if there is any excess, it can push over or buy bilateral contracting. Okay. In the medium term. In the medium term. Okay. One thing I picked up from what you have just said is that leveraging on their mandate of electricity act, now state are expected to collaborate with their neighbors to form regional power markets. You know, I'm sure that will go a long way in actually stemming this issue of grid collapse that we've had over time. But I just want you to just maybe clarify more because sometime the vice president, Kashim Shatema, was at the Agbara Lightup Niger project, and there was another one at Inugosui in all of this Lightup Niger project. What effect are we going to see on power supply in the country? Excellent. This is the short-term solution. This is what needs to be done today, actually not today, before today. So October last year, the vice president flagged up the Lightup Agbara project. And then in February this year, the Lightup site Southeast project was flagged up. That is what we should be doing right now because we see the 13,000 megawatt, I talked about in the beginning, as what we have as installed capacity. And we can only get about 3,500 from it to the consumers. The remaining 9,500 up to 10,000 megawatt that we have stranded, we should immediately supply industrial clusters. And there are private investors that are really ready to work with the federal government, NDPAC, FGM Power Code, the Ministry of Power, and they are only working this. What they have to do is to supply the industrial clusters, supply manufacturing sectors at a premium price. And when they get this money, it will create some form of liquidity to bring cash that will be available to now subsidize whatever is supplied currently to all of us residential consumers. And that way we will cover the entire customer base, which is residential, commercial and industrial. So I must repeat, we should actually continue with this Lightup Nigeria project. It is a very, very important solution for Nigeria so that our manufacturing sector can thrive. They can become competitive. The economy will develop as a result. This is the thing to do in the next six to 12 months. This will create power, certainly in the next six to eight, 12 months. So it's a short-term solution. That's what we should be doing now. So for the sake of time, let's really try to cover more, we have just about two minutes for a wrap up now. So in all of this now, what other aspect are we supposed to look at to really stem this issue of power in the board? Because it is really affecting all aspects of our economy. The real sector, the manufacturing, like you mentioned, the industrial sector are being affected. What are key areas very quickly do we need to address, maybe in the short or maybe medium or long-term basis? First of all, to set up, to declare an emergency in the past sector under the leadership of the Minister of Power. These power sector task force should be created. Competence, meritocracy should be the foremost consideration. Set up these task force that will work and make sure that all these things are discussed, get sorted out. Now, metering will be very important. Metering, there is a presidential metering initiative that is coming up. But we have had several initiatives before on metering. And we have CAPMAE, we have MAAP, we had version zero and version one of a metering initiative in the last administration. This particular home must never be like that and it should form, it should be directed in a way that transparent and people will feel the impact. People will get the meters and so on and so forth. The next thing is the cost-repleted metering. I must mention this because you have seen that the base price of gas has just been increased a few days ago. And people talk about cost-repleted metering. You remember what happened when subsidy was removed from oil last year and we are all experiencing the impact. If you don't put meters before putting metering on, it's not a way to run the power system. So what we need to do is to ensure that service-based tariff should be used so that people pay for the ban here. But if they are getting only two hours or six hours and you are charging them for so much, then you cannot still increase it. I can bet you if you increase the tariff, you will never get power to the people without investment. All right, we have to go for the sake of time. But you will agree with me that we cannot really exhaust all of the issues of power in just one episode. We have to bring you back on the show so we can actually highlight other areas. And the metering on its own is just a very big topic to talk about. We'll bring you back again on the show, hopefully by next week, so we can do more justice to this issue of power supply in the country. My guest has been Dr. Ido Oyebanjo, MD, Ed Fund Power and General Consultant. Many thanks for being a part of Business Insights for today. Thank you very much. My pleasure. All right, that's the size of the show for this morning. I am Justin Akadoni. Many thanks for being there.