EP46: Davíð Oddsson

Davíð Oddsson served as prime minister of Iceland between 1991 and 2004. However, Oddsson wasn't just prime minister; he also served as Mayor of Reykjavik, Governor of Iceland’s Central Bank, and as the editor of Iceland’s biggest newspaper. 

Whilst he didn’t serve in these positions at the same time, there was a clear attempt by Oddsson, over a period of many decades, to get his friends and allies into positions of influence. He privatised the banks from parliament, his friends took control of them, and he then let the banks do whatever they wanted as Central Banker. The issue is that letting the banks do “whatever they wanted”, ended up nearly destroying Iceland’s economy; in 2008, Iceland was engulfed in one of the worst financial crises in the world. 

My guest today is Icelandic investigative journalist Helgi Seljan. Helgi is an editor at independent media outlet Stundin, and uncovered revelations surrounding the Panama Papers in 2016. As well as Oddsson’s career, we discuss the importance of fish to Iceland, Icelandic politics’ ugly underbelly, and why Iceland has never joined the EU, and whether it should. 

Transcript

Unknown: 0:04

Hello and welcome to the hated in the dead with Tom Leeman. This week, I bring you two episodes. This one and another about former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori. The Fujimori episode is a bit of an experiment, not due to format, which says the same, but due to language. The episode is in Spanish rather than in English. To my listeners who can't speak Spanish, I offer my sincerest apologies. I was determined to upload the episode you're about to hear on the same day as the furthermore one. In order to give you an English language episode for the week ahead. To my bilingual listeners, you're very much in luck. You get to hear my tinpot Spanish through your headphones. Anyway, on with this episode, David odsonne served as the prime minister of Iceland between 1991 and 2004. A libertarian in personal politics often took Iceland by storm in the 1990s. By turning the ideologically nondescript ruling Independence Party into a party of low taxes and privatisation. Autzen projected himself as a sort of Margaret Thatcher of the near Arctic Circle. However, odsonne didn't only serve as prime minister. He also served as mayor of Reykjavik, governor of Iceland's central bank, and as the editor of Iceland's biggest newspaper. Whilst he didn't serve in these positions at the same time, there was a clear attempt by Autzen over a period of many decades to get his friends and allies into positions of influence. He privatised the banks from Parliament, his friends took control of them, and he then let the banks do whatever they wanted to a central banker. The issue is that letting the banks do quote unquote, whatever they wanted, ended up nearly destroying Iceland's economy. In 2008, the country was engulfed in one of the worst financial crises in the world. Austin's controversy, therefore precedes him. And his claim to be a libertarian, somebody who wants the state to leave the market alone looks completely false. Autzen was a crony capitalist, through and through. My guest today is Icelandic investigative journalist Helge psyllium Helge is an editor at independent media outlet stranden and uncovered revelations surrounding the Panama Papers in 2016. As well as opsins, Korea, we discussed the importance of fish to Iceland, Icelandic politics, ugly underbelly, and why Iceland has never joined the EU, and whether it should, ladies and gentlemen, it's time to introduce David Dobson. Hi, hello, game. How are you? Hi, the one great, thank you. Good. How we were talking about Tavis odsonne Today, I hope I hadn't sort of massacred the pronunciation of his name. Yeah. It was good, good. Worse. He was the prime minister of Iceland between 1991 and 2004. He held various other roles in Icelandic politics. And in the establishment. Before and after. oxen, I've heard him describe his own politics. As a libertarian. He was a group of people that sort of thought of themselves as libertarians in Iceland in Icelandic politics. Iceland, obviously, is a very isolated country. Libertarianism tends to do quite well, in places that are quite cut off from the world perhaps because, you know, in the wilderness, there's a sense of, you know, individualism that takes hold of people. What, how pervasive would you say libertarianism is within Iceland? I think actually, it's funny that you mentioned it, because I think it's because I just had a talk with a friend about it recently. And we were talking about how relatively open minded Icelanders were towards the big changes that Darwin and his group of people that in a short span of years came to great power and Icelandic society which they had and, and have, in a way still now. almost 35 years later, it's I think it's rooted in the the written history and the history that were taught about the Icelandic independence. I remember just this book If that was part of the curriculum when I was a kid, that was the story of part of the early history of Iceland, it was, it just had the name, the independence of Iceland, which was kind of funny, because a lot of the time it's banned. We were not independent. But we were, you know, in a way, waking up and working towards independence at around 1900. We were, well, we finalise the independence in 1945 1944. But we were, you know, generally self governed and 1918. But I think, you know, for people who ride dealer stick about being Icelandic and being free and being independent, I think libertarianism was right up their alley. Olson was born in 1948. And he became mayor of Reykjavik in 1982. I've been to Reykjavik and in in the most polite terms, when you're there, I felt anyway, that it was like a very big village. Almost, and I don't mean that in a sort of disparaging way, but it's, you know, it doesn't feel big for like for a capital city and obviously, Iceland only has I think, 300,000 a population of 300,000. What's the politics of running somewhere like Reykjavik? Is it does it is it sort of parochial what are the sort of issues that that are discussed in Reykjavik politics, obviously, Reykjavik is so important to the rest of Iceland, in a way that few other capital cities are for their country. At the time that David became a member of the of the city council, and later was the mayor of recovery. There was a totally different scenario in these days are those days for example, the city, for example, had a huge stake in fisheries, a big fisheries business, which was then privatised under one day, David was a mayor, which was one of the first of many privatisations that went through in what has been described as the big liberalisation of, of the Icelandic industry. So in a way, times were different back then. But it was of course, for decades, it was a huge stronghold for the Independence Party, the city council and the mayor will see, of course, in Reykjavik, but that changed almost immediately after ASAN left and became prime minister. And since then, I think the Independence Party has, I don't know if it's maybe one and a half term that they have been part of a coalition in the city council of Reykjavik. So. So yeah, times they have changed, because and that has also been the case with the Independence Party. Nationwide, they have been losing the stronghold that they had. You mentioned the Independence Party there a few times. I mean, the Independence Party really is the has been the sort of dominant political party in Iceland, I think they've only lost outright one election in 2009. For reasons that we'll probably get to, if you if you think about the the ideology of the Independence Party, what do they believe in? What what type of independence? Are they looking for? What are they emphasising? Well, that's a good question, because it was actually, when opsin came to power, there had been some troubles in the party that was split up and, and he came to power at a moment when the party was repositioning itself through the idea of Allah to have him and, and the young libertarian, so, you know, of course moving towards that. But I think if you look at what the Independence Party, the slogans that they use, for example, now, and they have been, of course, having troubles ever since the collapse of the banks, although and, and, for example, they they've suffered bad real election results over the past past elections. I think that that could be summed up to the word freedom, and however you want to describe it, that's the word that they frequently use. And yeah, They are, of course, a free market cutting red tape. Party, at least that's how they want to want the voters to look at them. But but they have been a ruling party for such a long time that, of course, they've been called many names by their opposition by the opposition parties. And, and they of course, been heavily criticised for, for maybe, to put it mildly distributing freedom a little bit unevenly. We'll come on to that in a second. It might be interesting for people because the Nordic countries, I think most listeners would interpret as being broadly centre left. The Independence Party is basically a right wing. Small state organisation. Yeah, that's quite an interesting contrast with say, Denmark or Sweden, where the the Social Democratic parties have sort of seem forever in power and very rarely leave power. What do you think it is about Iceland that for that? That's not been the case? I don't know, like I told you before, I think it's, you know, a part of this is probably cultural. And I think that, you know, it should be noted that the Independence Party, you know, from, from looking at the people that happened been running for the Independence Party, ever since I started following politics around the mid 80s, or something, you have to see show that a lot of the people there would, wouldn't have to make a lot of change, even if they were running for Social Democratic Party and Scandinavia. But then again, you'd have people also that, you know, would even find it hard running for the right wing parties and Canada Navia. So it was, of course, a broad, broad group of people. But I think that's, yeah, it's not not the same thing. As it was in that sense. It's, it's moved, right? Yeah. And obviously, Autzen is is an important part of this. He became prime minister in 1991, after nearly a decade of being the mayor of Reykjavik. Obviously, this was very much a kind of, you know, this wasn't a change Exactly. In terms of the party anyway, he was just sort of taking over a mantle from from people that had gone before him within the Independence Party. I'm intrigued. Just one more sort of question set up a bit of context here. I mean, obviously, the something that people will know about Iceland, especially in in Britain is is the so called cod wars. As mayor of Reykjavik in the 1980s, would Olson have been particularly prominent in these kinds of you know, it wasn't obviously a real war, just, but in terms in terms of the discussions that were going on, about the wars when he was mayor of Reykjavik? Well, the wars were, of course, happened earlier, they were in the 70s most of the heavy fighting the put it like that, but, but yeah, I think I think that, you know, that was another thing that that Icelanders had have had a sense of misrepresenting over the years that, oversimplifying that, that, for example, the Cold War was basically where we brought, you know, the United Kingdom to its knees, we of course, know that, that now that the story is a lot more complicated, and, of course, it involves the, the US and, and basically, our position in the North Atlantic, having a US naval base, which was always a lot of, especially people from the left but also from the centre where we're always sceptical on on the US Iceland connection, and especially the naval base. So it was basically the US had a lot to do with finally telling the, the UK to leave our water. So but you know, we'd like to think that, that it was just us and that sort of, again, about the culture of the waIking element of Icelanders and, and and yeah, we as being few but incredibly strong and incredibly reliant. So yeah. But to answer the question, of course, when David David kit became a prime minister, for example, and later on when he had the really good relationship relations with, for example, Bill Clinton and George Bush, supposedly something that, I believe was a huge personal shock to him, at least it was to some of his most dedicated followers, when the US suddenly announced in 2006, that they were going to withdraw the troops, so to say, and close down the naval base in Iceland. And I for one, believe, and, and there has been a lot of talks about it that for example, Icelanders being part of the coalition of the willing, which was, in a way, a bit out of character. For for a country that, you know, doesn't have an army was, in a sense, something that odsonne. And at the time, Foreign Minister, Hoskinson decided to do, just to see through it, see to it, that the naval base wouldn't be closed, but that they didn't succeed with that. And in a way, that decision of taking part in the Coalition of the Willing mark, in a way, an end to the political career of ours crimson, and badly hurt. The one of also, if we look at Austin's premiership, it was 13 years long. Fish is obviously a very important industry for Iceland. In terms of, you know, I think when we think of like national industries, the things that are really important to countries, they often the government often wants to try and like keep them close. The state wants to try and be close to that industry. That's not really something that chimes with the views of a libertarian, a libertarian wants to kind of like, you know, roll back the state and kind of unleash the market on different industries. How did odsonne marry his kind of personal libertarian views on on the economy, with what I presume would be a view among Icelandic that this is almost like our, our flag carrier really? Well, the thing about opsin is, you have two sides of the same character. He was, of course, an avid supporter of libertarianism, privatisation and this liberalisation. But it became clearer and clearer. And, and I would like to say crystal clear towards the end of his seeding, as the Prime Minister. And of course, when he took over the central bank, that he wasn't all that keen on letting go of the control of the state of, for example, who would be ruling the free market. And there there are, of course, many, many instances where he was, for example, the privatisation of the banks, and which, of course, is a huge factor in the collapse of the banks. Some four years later, were basically the owners of the bank where the two banks were hand picked one by each party, setting aside all due diligence of the buyers and stuff and, and in a way, putting them into the hands of financial children in a sense. So it's, I mean, it's cronyism, really? Yeah, of course it is. And that's what, of course, I think, will always be that always taints the image of a lot of Icelanders about Mr. Robertson, because, you know, as a libertarian, on paper, he, of course, he ticked all the boxes, he private, private society, he opened the markets he gave made a deal with the EU and the European Free Trade Association. He was a part of that, you know, basically, turning everything from black and white to HD and Iceland, as a supportive would like to think, but only in a way that suited him and his cronies, in a sense and, and he, he was, you know, that's another side of him. The vindictive, not so keen on forgiving Autzen that that of course, was one of the big flaws I would think about, about the guy. When you think about his time in office, that kind of unleashing of the market and all of these things you We, in Britain obviously had a similar thing going on in the 1980s and 90s, under Thatcher, and also under Blair, the Labour Prime Minister who came after that show. But I think there was a feeling at least under Thatcher that a lot of what she did, there was kind of like a base level of support for the kind of right wing economics that she that she put on the country, where people Iceland is crying out for this sort of thing? Or was this something that was very much just imposed by quite a well organised clique? Who obviously had control of the party that had never been out of power? So it was hardly difficult for them to do a lot of this stuff? Well, obviously, you know, there was, at first, it wasn't done overnight. You know, there were, of course, they he gained, you know, he had huge support, personal support, you know, we should not forget that, for this guy, for him to be the one out of the clique of young men who later became prominent members of government, industry and whatever, it's no coincidence that the old son became the most powerful and the Prime Minister, he was an ace, a charismatic guy. And people tend to forget that now, when he's writing op eds, as a, an editor marking plan in support of Trump, and, you know, giving, giving wings to all kinds of conspiracy theories, you know, denying global warming and stuff. People forget that he was an extremely charismatic guy that Icelanders first recognised when he was a, when he had a famous radio show when he was in his early 20s. He was really funny he was, and he was good with words, obviously. And he's a nice writer, for example, when he was Prime Minister, he, he, he had a best selling novel, I remember, short book with short stories that he came out and also sold pretty well. And, and that's another side of him that, that I think, was also a part of how instrumental he came to be, and how powerful began, he became. But I think that, you know, although people know that he was a libertarian, and he had, you know, these young guys, were talking about free market, and, you know, basically making their own kind of revolution. I don't think that, that that played a role early on, when people voted for him, for example, but, but of course, you know, one time when as time went by, and, you know, it was a prosperous time, people felt that in their wallet, until, of course, we went bust, then there was no shortage of people who wanted to blame Autzen for all of it and make him so somewhat of a scapegoat for, for a thing that actually, a lot of people had a trumped up. In the years before. We'll come back to the sort of economic side of this. You mentioned, the Americans, you mentioned three different presidents ranging Clinton, Bush and Trump. I think odsonne basically had good things to say about all of them. I've seen videos of him meeting, George Bush, and I think on his birthday, Bush's birthday, and like giving him a, you know, presenting him with like gifts and all that sort of thing. I mean, libertarianism is something that lots of people would associate with America. Do you think that politically, he he felt more comfortable in the States? I mean, obviously, Iceland is kind of straddled in between these two big continents. One Europe field think of it as you know, being fairly liberal fairly, especially on social issues. fairly liberal and America, perhaps less so. Do you think he felt more at home westward as it were? I'm not really sure you, you know. You have to remember that there wasn't. There was no alpha male on the right. At the time that he was in power in the UK. They only had this this light blue social democrat, called Tony Blair. So there was you know, the parties would at least better when you were in the States. There were at least better photo ops with guys in power, but it It should also be recognised that, you know, he, he became, well, it's fair to say friends with with people like Silvio Berlusconi, for example. And but, but I think the issue of the naval base was always a huge one. And from around before 2000, it became at least a possibility that it hasn't been hadn't been for 50 years before that we might lose the base. And just to put it in perspective, you know, it was a huge economical thing for Icelanders, we had, you know, big societies were solely based on on, on a lot of work. were employed by the, by the Navy, and, and so on. And we are, of course, gained a lot of a lot of money from from the US while they were here. So, so, yeah, I think that, you know, I think that's part of the part of the story why He emphasised on on the follow ups in the White House and, and the birthday present. Yeah, looking pretty ridiculous. As we said, he stopped being Prime Minister in 2004 and became the central banker of the kind of Iceland's Central Bank, the leader. Why did he make that shift? I think that, you know, he you know, the year, the year or two leading up to him, stepping down as prime minister, and, you know, the year that he sat as Foreign Minister, I think there was, there has been huge controversies, brewing for some time, related to his not so cold war with the bow wood conglomerate, bow group who many of you, your UK listeners might might know, from temporarily buying up all kinds of companies and in the UK, he was well bold to explain they had, they were a major player in the Icelandic retail business, they were the largest shareholder. And it was, at a time when there was clock called for a closer supervision of monopoly. There was it had been clear for some time, all the way since Bode went in when the first bank was privatised. Burwood. With a young you'll notice give the owner some kind of outplayed Daveed by putting together a group of investors that bought the back from under his nose aback that Davina had actually planned to sell to more favourable investors. So that kind of made him angry. Then there was this big investigation into paper that even though it wasn't successful at the end, and it's a long story, but but in a sense that it always wreaked with political interference. The fact that David's right hand guy was a minister of justice, you know, they were Yeah, it was a huge controversy, which ended kind of in an Birdwood. Being an owner of a huge media company in Iceland, the biggest newspaper at the time, the biggest, or the Yeah, the only private TV company. And this was something that wasn't of opsins interest. So the libertarian, one of his last fights, as prime minister was trying to put in action regulations that would have basically cut bogus media empire in half. That was a huge controversy, of course, and it ended up with the president of Iceland, who until that moment was, well, sort of like our elected royalty in a sense, supposed to be above politics. Yeah. But But hat through articles of the Constitution, the power to take laws and put it into a national referendum. And for the first time in history in the history of that of the Republic. This was done with the media law. And option, of course, having a history with the then president of Iceland was of course not really happy with that. And it was a fight that that basically, as fights often do make everyone dirty. And him both dirty and I believe, a little bit tired. So it was, of course, it was a highlight of, of, of the his fight with how would you say that? Well, his worsening of the deplorables, which were the blue guys and the part of the part of the free market that that didn't belong to him. I mean, you've mentioned obviously the disaster that came in 2007, eight, as a result of some of this kind of trickery that odsonne had put in place with the banks, just for people who I mean, I can just about remember this happening, but just for people who are perhaps younger than I am. Can you tell me can you describe to people what happened in 2007? Eight in Iceland? I mean, it was pretty, pretty dreadful. Yeah, we basically, we had a huge in the span of a couple of years, our banks had grown exponentially, you know. So when money dried up, foreign money was a fuel. The banks that we now we know. Now, we're not the big foreign players, as we thought they were, they were mainly piggy backs for their owners, and the relevant colleagues. When the international crisis started, everything went bust in Iceland, we had to we had the three big banks who were like what, you know, a lot bigger economically at the time, then I think it was 12 fold bigger than the national economy. They went bust. And Iceland, and Iceland, and Icelanders almost went completely post with it. Well, we did, of course, but we had to go to the IMF and endure a programme of IMF, which was, you know, in hindsight, really good for us at the time, but, you know, it was a, it was a huge, huge disaster, to put it mildly. And a shock to the system, presumably after such a long period of, of, you know, stability and growth. I mean, I think this is the point really, along with with his attempts to become editor of Iceland's main daily, this was the moment at which people really started to turn against him, wasn't it? Well, yeah, he was, you know, there was a, one of the special investigation on the backing collapse and what went wrong. And one of the things that came out of that was that odsonne had in his job as a central bank, Governor, you know, neglected to do his duty, when, for example, regarding the famous eyesafe accounts, and similar things, and also by, you know, neglected, other things that were believed to have helped in making things worse. So, he was kind of forced out of the central bank at a time, you know, and these were, of course, crazy times you even people even talked about it openly that they might have to carry him out of the central bank because he was not going to leave. But eventually, in 2009, he was ousted from the back and replaced and a half a year later or something he a group of companies that were in fact, the biggest players in the Icelandic fishing industry, who really wealthy at the time, and almost the the only wealthy people in Iceland at the time. They so called quota holders, they bought more comply with the more morning paper as a call this had been had just went bankrupt and had almost 100 100 years history. We had always been, of course, right leaning close ties to the Independence Party, but still with what's the most the biggest newspaper in Iceland and highly regarded by many as being a good newspaper. But these guys came and they bought it from from insolvency and mate, David Olson, the editor of Mormon blood. So we're talking about a guy who went from being a shock jock on the radio, to being mayor, Prime Minister, governor of the central bank, to being the editor of of the biggest newspaper. So as many people put it, he wanted to end the career in, you know, writing his own history. It didn't leave any jobs for anyone else today. No, it's fair to say that, you know, that he didn't. He never was police commissioner, though. I'm quite glad considering some of the other things he did. I mean, yeah, but that's something that Hansen who was the police commissioner, and there's, that's another story, but that's one of the reasons that, that people tended not to, well disliked some of his some of the ways and means he did his politics was, for example, how he saw to it that his guy was named the police commissioner, and when, when it suited him, for example? Well, this is something I wanted to ask you. I mean, Iceland, when studies are released about international levels of, you know, government, Iceland is often ranked in the sort of top 10 of like, you know, best governed countries, it's considered, you know, a country a bit, but, you know, like other Nordic countries, you know, people govern with restraints, there's, you know, very high levels of freedom and freedom of information, and, and, you know, separation of different powers. I mean, this completely blows that image that people have of Iceland apart. I mean, do you think that there's a sort of ugly underbelly? Of course, it is, you know, just for me, for example, when I have been meeting colleagues, and I have been working with colleagues from all over the world of big investigations, for example, since before 2016, for example, the Panama Papers and, and what transpired there was, of course, the fact that a country of 300,000 people in the Panama Papers last years itself, we had 600, Icelandic names related to offshore companies, which was, you know, per capita, we, we basically blew up every other country, which showed you, in a sense, how big of a facade we put up for foreigners, and the ruling elite in Iceland, has put up for, for the general public. And a part of that is, of course, we were, you know, we were ranked as the least corrupt country in Scandinavia, I think, at one point or something, one of the, you know, best ranked European countries after the collapse of the banks and what transpired after that the Panama Papers, just stuff we have, you know, we're, we're at the bottom of the list of Nordic countries, and we have been, you know, falling on the list of the free media. And I think the, the biggest deficit has been the deficit in the Icelandic ego. You know, we've had, you know, huge steps in this ego I told you about, about us being the conquerors and, you know, every Icelander counts as 10 or 20. German sir us or whatever. Woods, of course, Lane ground for us believing that in a span of a couple of years, we had basically decoded back. You know, we actually believe that after a short period of us going from black and white to HD in regards of the financial markets, we had basically been able to outsmart countries and cultures that had been ages and even 1000s of years of dealing with with money. So all of a sudden, we had decoded the banking world. But then, of course, it became clear to us that we just created a Ponzi scheme. I mean, what you're describing really is is kind of collective delusion of grandeur really a kind of collective arrogance. I don't want to, you know, I don't know many Icelandic. So I don't want to pretend, you know, I don't want to say that you're all really arrogant. But I mean, I come back to this issue of ice and being very far away from everything and being very removed. You know, it's the there's very little around around Iceland. Do you think that's where that kind of delusion, if you want to call it that comes from the fact that you're just so removed from everything? Yeah. And I was best described by by a guy who asked me a question. Not so long ago go. When he asked me, also, Icelanders believe that they are wealthy, because and not, despite who they are. Which kind of put it in puts it in perspective, we're here. Isolated, yes. But we have. We have huge wealth of natural national resources, we have water, we have hot water, we have geothermal and hydro energy, we have fish, probably one of the richest fishing grounds in the world. You know, due to our position we are, you know, we are relatively few peaceful, you know, all of that. And despite the group of people still living here we are it's not because of it, as he put it. And I think, you know, being almost sarcastic, I think that's, you know, something that, that we should think about, I just have a couple more questions for Yogi feel happy just for, you know, 10 more minutes. Iceland's never joined the EU. It's always had a, you know, sort of close ish relationship with the EU, it's in the European Free Trade Area. Why? Why is it never joined? Fish? Thought so. Yeah, it's just a part of the reason that opsin was made the editor of Mormon blood, and it wasn't even, you know, they, they didn't shy away from from saying that was the fact that the ruling government at the time, the social democratic, leftist Green Government was starting to their talks with the EU, the formal membership for Iceland, and for the fishing industry, which is the single biggest lobbying power in Iceland. That was a nightmare. And, yeah, so the reason is fish. Do you think that, given what we were just talking about? And, by the way, sorry, you know, you could ask me like, 100 questions about why I slipped this way. I love that. And I think at least two out of 10, I could answer with the word fish. So yeah. You, I mean, in terms of what we were discussing about, you know, a sense of isolation, and perhaps a certain cultural complacency that comes with that isolation. I mean, obviously, the EU is, you know, is has its own issues. It has many, many issues with with sort of corruption and financial trickery and all the rest of it. But do you think that possibly being in a club, rather than just constantly talking to your own people, and having to kind of cooperate with other countries in Europe? Do you think that that might help to sort of move you past that cultural complacency? Do you think that EU membership could actually do ice and quite a lot of good from that point of view? Yeah, I think that, you know, having told you about the the overblown ego that the typical Icelander so to speak, has had his own misjudgment of his self worth. I think that it's pretty hard to deny it. But we've always done best when we've been in cooperation and the best connection with countries abroad. And I think a lot of the reason that the people who have been pro EU in Iceland and of course, we shouldn't forget that through the the FTA agreement that we have, we are, you know, sometimes said that we are 85% members of the EU, because we we generally adapt, you know, to the, to the loss of the common market, and almost every sense except for the agriculture and fish, and, of course, the monetary market. But, and we've had since we joined the FDA, there was a huge change in Iceland regarding laws and regulations and, and a lot of it, what was deemed to have, at the time to be part of a huge liberalisation of the markets in the free market was, of course, gained by the common law of the EU that we took in practice here. So yeah, and of course, just the mere fact that that having, you know, I wouldn't call it oversight, but to kind of like to get at least another eye or two on on, for example, the government, common laws and practices would be great. I think that's what that's what people who tend to look to the EU are looking for, they're looking for kind of more separation of power between us we are at the end of the day only 300,000. We are basically Coventry you know, it's a it's a hell of a lot nicer than Coventry. Yeah, at least we're not looting. Okay, thank you very much. I really enjoyed that. And if people want to find out more about what you've written about Iceland, and specifically, I know, I know, You've written quite a lot about the Panama Papers. So where can where can they go? Well, they can probably go online, I think would be the best thing to try. And I'm working at stuntin St. u and d i n.is. Right now. I used to work for the for the state broadcaster or U V. Yeah, yeah, you could, you could find some of some of the things I've done. Online probably jsrv Thank you. Thank you for listening to the hated in the dead. If you've enjoyed this podcast, follow it on Spotify and Apple podcasts. And for good measure. 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