this is bbc news. the headlines: turkey's first—ever presidential run—off election is under way as voters decide who can curb the country's rampant inflation rate and tackle the cost—of—living crisis. president recep tayyip erdogan is seeking to extend his rule into a third decade. mr erdogan�*s main rival is the secular opposition leader kemal kilicdaroglu. speaking after casting his vote, he urged turkey to get rid of the authoritarian regime in the country. russia unleashes a wave of air strikes on kyiv overnight in what officials say appear to be the largest drone attack on the ukrainian capital since the start of the war. ukraine says 52 out of 5a drones

aimed at the capital were shot down. britain's government is discussing plans for supermarkets to cap the price of basic food items to help tackle the rising cost—of—living crisis. now on bbc news, political thinking with nick robinson. hello and welcome to political thinking, a conversation with, rather than an interrogation of, someone who shapes our political thinking about what has shaped theirs. every so often there's an issue that bubbles up, if you'll forgive the metaphor, and reaches beyond the westminster bubble. the issue we're talking about today is the issue of sewage, the quality of our waterways, our rivers and our seas.

my guest this week on political thinking is the man who's ensured that no political figure can ignore that question of the quality of our waterways. he is keen angler, campaigner and original lead singer with the undertones, feargal sharkey. a man who left the stage in order to campaign for musicians�* rights before taking up his current position as one of the country's leading environmental campaigners. he began life in the bogside in derry. as we'll hear, he is now a hero to people from the green party to the readers of the daily telegraph, the countryside alliance, to surfers against sewage circle. feargal sharkey, welcome to political thinking. thank you very much for having me. now, you have been described, i saw, as a "stroppy former punk rocker who won't take no for an answer". do you plead guilty?

am i right in thinking that might have been a man called michael dugger? yeah, i'm seeing him in a few days�* time. i'm going to have to remonstrate with him over that. former labour mp. the head of the music industry. indeed. do i take no for an answer? no. i've never been very good at that. stroppy? well, i'll discuss that with michael further. we can expand on that one. i would deny the former charge and probably have to concede the latter one. what about former punk rocker? do you think of yourself as a punk? because undertones clearly came in that era, but i looked at a video of you the other day, there you were, not with the kind of spiky hair, not with the safety pins. you were there with a smart jacket, a white shirt. not that different from you today. listen, you know, it was a moment in time. where there things called �*punk rock�* and derry? probably not. were we at the time, developing a young band and five

kids putting a band together that shared a lot of the same ethos and ideals? absolutely, without question. but we were very clear about it, we were just trying to make great three—minute pop songs. what about the punk bit of it? because, yeah, you said it was an era, but if it was anything, it was anti—establishment. it was an ability to say there's something wrong with the way things are organised. well, for me it's not necessarily anti—establishment, it's anti what's going on is not working. and for those of us that are old enough, bearing in mind the mid—1970s, if the united kingdom was ever ripe for revolution, then it was the mid—1970s. now in northern ireland and in derry we had kind of a decade head start by that point for other reasons, but people here will remember mountains of rubbish being disposed of and collected and held in leicester square. there was three—day working weeks. the electricity supply being rationed. i think it was just simply young

people rebelling about what they were about to inherit and the state of the nation that they would be gifted by the adults and people in control at the time. now in a hundred ways we're a long way from that, but there was a poll recently showing that a vast number of people think things simply don't work in this country. it seems to me, and we'll talk specifically about water in a second, that maybe that's what this has, forgive the pun, tapped into a sense of things aren't good enough. oh, i personally have no doubt about that at all. there is an enormous sense of rage and anger and frustration out there right across the board. and it's not a party political broadcast, but we have created a nation where nurses are having to sit and make a choice at night between whether or not the children get fed or the heating gets kept on. this is a g7 member state, one of the leading national countries on the planet, one of the most open market—based economies and we've created

that kind of situation. well, as the saying goes, a plague of locusts on all of our houses for ever haven't allowed that to happen. so is the sewage campaign being used by some people to express that frustration and anger and outrage? absolutely. because it has become a symptom of a much greater disease and malaise that this nation is suffering from. well, talk about that background in derry and the influence it had on you in a minute or two. but, first of all, why sewage? why water? why of all the things that you might be passionate about? there i was, minding my own business! it's the love of fishing that begins it. oh, it is. the school that i went to, the christian brothers in derry, had a very was founded on a very simple ethos. now, the local community was made up of one—room houses with dirt floors and sometimes not one, but two and three families living in one room.

so the whole ethos of the school was we don't have the resource and the means to provide these people with charity, but what we can do is educate the kids. amongst other things, we were presented with a very long list of after—school clubs and societies, and you were required to volunteer for six. and one of those six was angling. funnily enough, there was two boxes, one marked fly fishing, the other marked fly tying. 0k, fishing. yeah. there'll be people listening, there's people watching. who say, i don't get it. what's a grown man down there standing there with a stick? what is it? well, you see, here's the thing. as isaac bolton himself said, is it not an art to deceive a trout with a fly? a trout? i have always had one of those minds

that i've got 10,000 different things rattling about in the back of my mind all day long, every day. i find it quite a challenge on occasion just to back off and relax and fly. fishing is one of those things that i have to concentrate on because bearing in mind what you're actually doing is trying to deceive this beautiful, wild fish outright, that this thing that you've assembled using bits of feather and fur and silk, actually resembles a real life, genuine insect. you notjust enthuse about fishing, but you become and still are the chair of the oldest angling club in england. yeah. and it's there that you see what's happening to the water as part as pa rt of my handover and i had been aware of it standing this river, we were losing water to the extent that the water, the river was stagnating. now we're talking about two and a half miles of chalk stream in hertfordshire. this is one of the rarest river systems on the planet, and we're treating it with that level of contempt. now, i went and as part of the handover, i had a number of conversations with the environment agency and rapidly became aware that this was an issue that people had known about for the better

part of 15 years. they'd known what was causing it, they'd known what the solution was, but did little, if anything, to act upon it to such an extent that this river was dying. you took legal action, you tookjudicial review. we didn't quite get to the high court, but i was standing on the door banging furiously on the door, ringing the door bell, demanding entry. and thankfully at the last minute, as i normally refer to it, the grown—ups were let into the room. did you at that moment think this is a beginning of a new phase in my life? this is the beginning of a great campaign? or were just trying to get that bit of... that's all. i was interested in what it did, however, that experience. there's only 60 members of it. there's only ever been 60 members. and it kind of pricked my curiosity. and as i know you explain it

foolishly, stupidly, naively, i scratch that itch and i every day i scratch it. ijust end up with an even bigger itch. there's another puzzle for people looking at you, which is why it took you to get those 60 men and women to march. now, does that then take us all the way back to your upbringing in derry, your mum and dad marching? that you grew up in the place where the civil rights marches in northern ireland in the 60s really began. this is when we all start getting very freudian. is that where it becomes your knowledge of the need to campaign, the possibility of change? i know it's an old adage. yes, it is very freudian. and in my particular case, yes, you can blame the parents. my father was the chairman of the labour party in derry in the early 1960s when there was such a thing. branch secretary of his local union, the electricians union. i can vividly remember him pulling out a beaten up, faded old copy of the morning star, where he appeared in a generic photograph on the front page of delegates leaving the tuc conference in blackpool

winter gardens, 1963. when my father passed away, the irish times ran an obituary and highlighted how he had spent a lot of the �*50s trying to reach out because clearly we were catholics coming from derry trying to reach out to the protestant working classes and protestant workers on the basis that he was utterly convinced that the industrialists of northern ireland were using the axe and hatchet of sectarianism to divide the working classes and to exploit them. crudely, he didn't think this was, in essence, a battle between religious groups. not at all. it was a class battle. it completely and he was was in reality, a socialist trying to unite and combine the greater power and influence of the working classes to do a good deal with the industrialists. and yet, as a boy growing up in catholic derry, in nationalist derry, in republican derry at the moment that the ira was not born

but reborn, if you like, as an active terrorist organisation, you could not be political, could you? i mean, you have to be dragged into this. well, you see, the thing is, i've just said all about my father, but my father actually wasn't the politician in the house. my father wasn't the one was the campaigner and the driver of events. that was my mother. i'm more comfortable talking about this in the modern world. feargal is actually my second name. my first name is sean. i am named sean. after two dead irishmen killed while attacking a police station in northern ireland in 1957. what might that tell you about my mum's politics? and it was my mum. 0n the morning of the 9th of april,

1969, bundled everybody into the family car and demanded dad drove us to the other side of ireland, where as a family we took part in the people's democracy civil rights march between belfast and dublin, protesting and highlighting injustices one of the defining events of the period that led to what we now call euphemistically, absurdly, in many ways the troubles. yes. so i'm ten years old and i find myself in the middle of this people's democracy march, walking down the middle of the main road between belfast and dublin, waving very enthusiastically. i have to say, what i later would begin to discover was commonly referred to as an anarchist flag. but you're ten years old. this is fantastic. it's a day out. you say you're comfortable talking now. so much has changed. we've just marked some have celebrated not all the good friday belfast agreement. in those days to admit you were named after an ira man would lead to rage, hatred. 0h, listen, the truth is, in those days, you were very careful, and this applied to both communities. you would be very careful and very judicious about where you went at night, night after dark, and which parts of time you were prepared to enter

in which you were not, and which you would avoid. because simply for that fact, you could end up in an awful lot of trouble. the kind of shorthand version at the time in the 1960s and 70s, both, ironically enough, highlighting the injustice of the place. you would be asked a simple question — a simple question — what school did you go to? and that that was your label? well, as a teenager, that depended on whether or not you were about to be beaten up. but as an adult, that also dictated whether or not you're about to be offered thatjob you thought you were going to get. but that simple answer would dictate and tell and expose whether or not and whether you had a future or not. and whether or not you had a future at the time. in derry, i think it was about 60% of men in derry were unemployed and the vast majority of those, 99% of them were catholic. so you grow up with this injustice, with this passionate and political family.

what did they teach you, mum and dad, you said it was freudian about the politics you do now in which and we'll come to discuss this in the current context. your one minute having an alliance with the labour party, the next time is with the duke of wellington. you are forming cross—party alliances. it goes back to my father. some people might say that he was being brilliantly insightful, some possibly saying foolish, trying to reach out to the protestant working classes and go all of us as a class are being exploited by industrialists and we need to cut out this sectarianism and the things that divide us, because as a group, we will be better, stronger and bigger and more capable of dictating and controlling the future for the working classes in northern ireland. did they also make you believe that change was possible? because plenty of people growing up in that sort of politics, that sort of disadvantage, mightjust think, forget it. life is never going to work for me. well, it instilled in me two things.

and again, my mother was the driver in all of this. it became almost a demand of us. well, i think three things. 0ne, if you saw a social injustice, you had an obligation to confront it and deal with it. secondly, i was brought up in a world where i sat in a kitchen where the housewife, the plumber, the electrician, the unemployed, the school teacher debated and discussed and planned civil disobedience and rebellion. and i watched first—hand as a 12 year old, the schoolteacher, the housewife, the bricklayer, the electrician, the unemployed, bring down the national government in northern ireland or play quite a substantial part and bring it about the destruction of the government in northern ireland. so the house i grew up in, anything was possible. and the third was possibly the most biggest element of all. i was entitled to have an opinion and i could have pretty much any opinion i wanted, but i needed to be intellectually to justify it. now, you were clear that in a way

this is a conversation you can now have because people have moved on. on this podcast i've spoken to most of the leaders of politics in northern ireland in recent years. and all of them deeply, deeply scarred. yes. either, actually... yep. ...blown up shot or their relatives were. it forms a part of who they were. i think people listening to you don't know your story may nevertheless be surprised because they remember the undertones as a non—political band, a band who who really didn't sing about how you sang about girls life and happiness. absolutely. and i'm not trying to overdramatize this. if you went into the centre of support, you didn't have to go into the centre of town frequently. i couldn't even walk out my front door without within minutes finding myself spread eagled on my fingertips with my legs being kicked back, being searched and questioned and everything else. but by the way, that was not some injustice being perpetrated on me as an individual. if you a male teenager living in derry frequent the places i did

the bogside, the creggan. that was just a fact of life. there was only one moment that i can see in which the undertones did embrace might not be the right word, but reflect politics. you're on top of the pops. the night, bobby sands... somebody somebody has done the research! the hunger striker had died. i mean, for those of us of a certain age, and particularly for those of you from northern ireland. this was an extraordinarily profound moment. an ira man in prison who starves himself to death to make a political point. margaret thatcher's government in a rage about it. impotent, though, because you always are in the case of a hunger strike and plenty of people who are not supporters of terrorism or violence or the ira who had some sympathy for it. and the truth is yes to the original question. people in derry, and particularly young men, lived and breathed that all day, every day.

so when we were kind of playing in the casbah, a local pub that gave us a residency, the last thing the a0 or 50 people are peers, 17,18,19 years old, the last thing they needed on a friday night was us lecturing them about politics and injustice. outside the casbah, there was a british army checkpoint, so all they had to do was step out the door. but when it came to that particular event, here is a man, a citizen of the united kingdom, that has just starved himself to death and been overseen and that situation created and driven by the state that allowed that to happen. well, at that point, you've broken everybody�*s resolve. now everybody has to stand up. and if that meant wearing black armbands and top of the pops, well, so be it. and it's going to happen. a tune i know. well, i had no idea was to do with hunger strikes. had a message. yes. it came up on the once upon a lifetime of northern ireland. clearly, it covered bloody sunday. and yes, the story was told there.

and it was true because i was on the ground at the time, that single event the following day that swelled the ranks of the ira by untold multiples because people simply would not be prepared to accept that kind of act of violence by the state against its own citizens. so it is quite a journey from there to this alliance with the duke of wellington. now, long before you did the water campaign, long before you did the sewage campaign, you've alluded to it as well as being a music professional. you're a campaigner for the rights of musicians. you'd moved here. you said you didn't want your little boy to have the same sort of upbringing as you. how easy was it for you, though, to operate in the british establishment. that's why you to do to live a change in the music industry now water with the sort of background and with the sort of values you've been brought up with.

oh, no. you see, because that's as i hopefully have highlighted here. yes. some of those values were about being very focused on what you want to achieve. being very clear intellectually and how you can go achieve it. being incredibly empathetic to the people that you're talking to and understanding their point of view and their challenges and their objectives and trying to explore and find that commonality in that middle ground, being able to express it and narrate it and ultimately being able to create that kind of argument where people will see the justification and the right behind the point you're trying to make and be prepared to follow up and commit themselves to achieving the same goal. well, that's called politics. i didn't know that at the time, but that is what i believe is politics. and the inference you made and i did say it to him and he fell on the floor, roaring in laughter, a little while back i was having a conversation with the duke of wellington and it did occur to me and i did it him. listen, i've just had this thought. this government is so utterly hopeless. they've actually managed to put

the son of a republican irish family and the duke of wellington on the same side of an argument. that's a genius move. utterly brilliant. well done. and that was the alliance that produced some change in the regulation of the water companies and maybe led up to this moment that we had the other day in which the water companies issue this apology and promised to spend ten billion. now, i spoke to you on the today programme that morning. thinking you'd be very political. and you blew it up. maybe this is what that thing about being a punk campaigner. you basically said you didn't really believe a word of it. they should give the 10 billion back to ordinary people. well, as we now know, it's less than in fact, it's a week ago today that they made that apology. and as it turns out, it didn't even take a week before united utilities, severn trent water, two of the biggest sewage dumpers in the country, have now announced in the last 48 hours they are going to pay

£550 million in dividends to their shareholders over the next couple of weeks. so they weren't that bloody sorry. where they? well, they say no, look, if you don't pay dividends, you don't get shareholders, you don't have shareholders, you don't get investment. if you don't get investment, well, you don't have smarter sewers. here's the thing. water companies don't invest anything. any money that goes into the system comes out of our pockets. and for me, i thought it was the most incredible... it's a lack of foresight and planning and management and leadership within the industry to put that statement out because take out the apology bit, which was a non—apology. you must know at this point the level of anger, frustration and rage amongst your customers at what you've done over the last 30 years. 0utrageous! someone who i'm afraid in the in the rules of this business has to stay anonymous. he's worked with you on these issues in the power said he's got silly now he must know that you can't possibly give £10 billion back to the customers. the money's gone.

oh, the point... 0h, listen, the point i was trying to illustrate by bringing that up, it's a very simple one. and this was a regulator, in my opinion, is trying to cover their own rear end. 0fwat wrote to the water companies a year ago. a year and a half ago. reminding them of their statutory obligations, that they have a binding legal obligation to build, operate, maintain sewage systems, and i am quoting "capable of effectively dealing with the contents of those sewers". so you have a legal obligation to do it. the regulator saying that you have had all the funding to comply with that obligation. water companies have to certify annually that they've got all the funding they needed. well, we clearly haven't spent it in the sewage system. so where has our money gone? the people listening to this will say, why limit feargal sharkey to water? you've done music, you've

done water politics. well, nick, here's the thing. i, as a musician, was gifted the most beautiful, wonderful, glorious thing. for decades of my adult life, all of my adult life. random people have walked up to me, up in the street all over the world and simply wanted to introduce themselves and talk about music. now, what a glorious thing to happen about records people bought, gigs they had been to over the last two or three years. that has evolved into a whole other level. they now want me to talk about effluent and rivers. well, here's the thing. i'd be really happy to go back to talking about music as quickly and as efficiently as possible. i genuinely have no ambition to go and stand for parliament and all that kind of stuff. that's somebody else�*s job more suited than i am, which is very good news, because you could be lord sharkey. oh, no, stop that. that's just been a great thing for the republican boy from derry. there would be a story to tell! oh, yeah.

a little boy called sean fergal became lord sharkey. if i'm well, then you can have lunch in the house of lords dining room with the duke of wellington every day of it that's adopted. fergal sharkey, thanks very much indeed forjoining me on politicaljunkie. nick, thank you for the opportunity. hugely appreciate it. now, whether or not feargal becomes lord sharkey and i got the sense i wonder if you did that, he really wouldn't mind. he's got a lot to teach people about how to bring about change, being prepared to work with people you disagree with as well as those you agree with. always being willing to be personable and realising that to win in any campaign, you have to know your facts. you have to be intelligent. you have to be capable of debating, but above all, communicating a passion about a subject many other people may barely have given a moment's thought to in a way that makes them want to be part of your cause. thanks for watching.

hello. the big picture weather—wise this week is for things to remain largely dry with spells of sunshine. in the best of the sunshine and shelter from the breeze it will feel warm, where you are exposed to quite a brisk wind at times it will feel fairly chilly. a fair bit of pride for northern in western scotland, almost also eastern and central parts of england and east wales. for west and south wales and the south of england, that is where you have the best of the sunshine. tonight a lot of the cloud will melt away. we

will see one or two mist patches where the winds are light. an area of cloud rolling into some eastern parts of england. across some parts of scotland temperatures will drop away with some places getting down to freezing. into monday, high pressure still with us. around the edge of the high isobars tightly squeezed, meaning there will be brisk winds in the north of scotland and the east and south of england. that will take the edge of the temperatures. for monday morning, an area of cloud in eastern england heading back towards the coast. where the winds are light across northern ireland, parts of north—west england, western scotland, that is where we will have the highest of the temperatures. conversely, for some parts of northern scotland and eastern parts of england it will feel a bit chilly. regardless of the feel of the weather, the sun is strong. how

uv levels. bearthat the weather, the sun is strong. how uv levels. bear that in mind if you're out and about for any length of time. for tuesday, as soon of cloud across the eastern half of england. the best of sunshine further west. england. the best of sunshine furtherwest. nagging england. the best of sunshine further west. nagging winds in the south west corner making it feel chilly. glasgow could see highs of 24 chilly. glasgow could see highs of 2a degrees. it will be northern and western parts of the uk that see the highest temperatures in the middle part of the week. we will maintain quite a brisk breeze for southern and eastern parts of the uk to see the highest temperatures in the middle part of the week. we will maintain quite a brisk breeze for southern and eastern part at times. highest temperatures in the north and west, up to around 25 degrees.

mr erdogan�*s main rival is the secular opposition leader, kemal kilicdaroglu. speaking after casting his vote in the capital ankara, he urged turkey to get rid of the authoritarian regime in the country. and these are live pictures from istanbul. almost 200,000 polling stations are open across the country for more than 64 million people who are eligible to vote.