09/08/2013 Newsnight

mattress - should you put your money? With the Bank of England this

week indicating it's likely to keep interest rates low for years and

volatility on the stock market, figures today suggest savers are

increasingly trying to buy one of these. What's the impact on a

debt-riddled economy when savers can't save?

The extraordinary story of the woman who died in the 1950s and whose

apparently immortal cancer cells made billions for the drug

companies. The families claim for recognition

ends in a deal. Why has it taken more than half a century?

Plus New Jersey, Chicago, Brooklyn, and Uxbridge? When did our quietest

suburbs become the hideout of choice for mafia dons?

And who's the daddy? Why the extraordinary fascination with giant

pandas? We're looking in on Good evening. The forward guidance,

as they say in the jargon, coming from the Bank of England this week

is that UK interest rates are likely to stay very low for some time,

possibly until 2016, unless inflation begins to take off. That

is great news for borrowers especially those with large

mortgages but not good news for savers, the people whose thrift, the

Government says, we require for a healthy economy. So are there any

good choices for savers right now? And are the thrifty among us being

penalised for their virtue? Robin Denselow reports.

It is the end of the week. Friday evening at the historic golf club in

Essex. A group of friends get together for a game and a little

parting practice. Three of them are retired. They have paid off their

mortgages and have savings. But what to do with them in a week when the

new governor of the Bank of England gave a clear signal that interest

rates will remain at a mere 0.5% for some time? Jack used to run a fish

restaurant and has money in the bag. But the letters premium Bonds

succeed, his savings are not likely to match the rate of inflation.

have them if anything does go wrong but at the present time it does not

give you encouragement to invest anywhere. This is the embodiment of

the Thatcherite dream of a property owning democracy. 80% of homes here

are owner occupied, the highest rate anywhere in England. The news from

the Bank of England might be good for borrowers and those with

mortgages, but it is not good for those who have worked all their

lives and built up their savings. have a lot of people in this country

who have put money aside over the past few years so that they will

have an estate, something to live on, in their later life. They were

trying to be sensible and prudent, as they were encouraged to be, and

they were hoping to have an income from their savings. They have found

the income has virtually disappeared and what we heard this week is that

even over the next three years it is not likely that they will get any

income at all. But if you have enough money it is argued he can

still make money to put into property to rent out. Buy to let

mortgages made up just 5% in 2002 of all new mortgages. It rose to 12% in

2007 and then fell dramatically when the property market crashed. But it

is now back to the 2007 levels. Would the golfers consider that?

I was younger I would go into it in a big way but it is the young man's

sport. You have to have quite a bit of money because for five years you

the property market is very different. Not so many owner

occupiers. This is buy to let territory. It is argued that if you

have the money to buy a property to let it out, your returns will be far

greater than putting the money in the bank. People with money in the

bank are then getting capital growth at a later date if the markets start

to recover, which they seem to be doing.

There are a large number of properties available for rent here.

An average house costs �152,000 and the average rent �7,800 a year. The

result is a return on that rent of 5.13%, significantly above any thing

a bank can provide. But in order to buy to read, you need enough money

of course. That is no help for savers with modest means. As far as

I can see, policy makers simply do not care about savers helped by the

funding for lending schemes, the help to buy schemes, are actually

going to be those with quite a bit of money. This is about helping

those with lots of money to invest in another property. It is not about

the ordinary average saver. So the message from ethics is this. If you

saved a lot of money, you can make a lot more. If you saved a little, it

will be different. Simon Rose from Save Our Savers is

here along with the former banker and now financial writer Frances

Coppola and Henry Pryor who is a property market analyst and writer.

How tough things for savers? Impossible. It is impossible to

preserve the value of your capital. People have been lamenting that they

have put money buy for all their lives, hoping to eke out their

retirement, and having terrible trouble. It is not as though savers

are the only people missing out. Anyone with a wage is in that

position. Yes, wages are back to the level of ten years ago. Anyone on a

fixed income is even worse. What would happen to the housing market

in this hypothesis? It would come under pressure. Those that have

overextended themselves, and been taken in by the Government and

powers that be, and been encouraged to invest in property, could be left

as many people have a Northern Ireland nursing considerable losses.

They are still looking at losses of 50% or thereabouts in the province

since the crash of 2007. What would the political consequences of that

be, horrendous? Armageddon. That is why regardless of whether the

Government is right or wrong to be doing this, the Government is

determined to put a floor under house prices and make sure they

steadily increase, up to the 20 15th general election. Why does anybody

saving this kind of market? You might as well spend it. I understand

that people might want to spend their money rather than save it.

There are two kinds of savings, what you put away for a rainy day to

cover the washing machine breaking or something like that. I don't

think most people would expect to get much return on that anyway, it

is just a rainy day fund. We are talking about long-term savings, the

kind of money people put away for retirement. People have got used to

having high returns on savings because we have had strongly growing

economy. That is not the case any more. So savers finding the economy

cannot support the kind of income level they have got used to.

Successive governments have always said savers are so marvellous. It is

great to have them. We must rebalance the economy in favour of

saving rather than consumption. But it does not happen. It does not. In

order to get the recovery you need people to spend more, more economic

activity. The value of saving to the economy, quite apart from helping

people to prepare for their futures and so forth, to support themselves

in their retirement, is also so we can get some investment into the

economy, into small businesses, into productive investment. That is

really what we need capital for. But to do that, savers must be prepared

to take some risk. Do you take that point? The problem is we are

undermining savings. Savers have contributed �285 billion, they are

that much worse off, and they are propping up an alien economy that

they are not responsible for. If we have three years more, then savers

will have contributed �500 billion, four times the annual deficit of the

Government. But what about Henry's point, that if things were done to

make you happy, there could possibly be a housing crash? We got into this

crisis because of that and we have continued to stay in debt. We are

now being encouraged to take on even more debt. We are becoming ever more

dependent on this sort of pain relief of low interest rates. We

have now got to the stage where the patient is not being treated. It is

kept on pain relief until it is totally dependent on it. What do you

make of that? I have sympathy for that point of view. Ramping up

consumer debt again is not the way to recover from this. We need

investments and for that we do need people to be putting money aside,

into the economy, investing in business. We need people to be doing

that. Where does buy to let come into this? You cannot just take

savings and buy a house. We are taking people from being savers and

turning them into speculators. The housing market might have a

reasonably rosy short-term view. We respect has prices, especially when

stage two of the controversial help to buy scheme from the Government

kicks in, whereby people can borrow money to buy houses up to �600,000

that are second hand, not just new build as the scheme works at

present, which will add further stimulus to the frothy housing

market and will drive up prices. That is attracting speculators,

people looking at buy to let. It is an alternative to 0.5% returns at

the bank. That is all as it is great and one day it will not be. As long

as the music keeps going, we're happy, but it. . All bubbles

eventually burst. So what should savers do? You want the Bank of

England to do something but what are the alternatives for savers now?

individual savers should get the best possible savings rate. They are

all terrible but some are even worse. Some people took a bonus on

the account, it has gone and they have not realised they are getting

next to nothing. If you want cash savings, not speculation, you are

going to be losing money. Do you see the argument for going into

speculation? I can see why it happens. Savers are getting

increasingly desperate. But inflation, everybody is losing the

value of their money. The pound has depreciated in value one third over

the last ten years. If this carries on, we will get to the stage where

people understand it is not worth hanging on to money at all, and then

we have really serious problems. What can savers do? It depends what

they want to do. If they are saving for the long-term, to my mind money

is not the thing to invest in for the long term anyway. You need to

look at financial and hard assets and things like that. I don't think

buy to let is a particularly good strategy for people that are iffy

about risk, simply because we should not forget the crash in 2008.

Bradley and Bingley actually failed because the bottom fell out of the

buy to let market. It happened before and it can happen again. This

looks like an overheating bubble to me. It needs some care that people

should not be expected to put large amount of money in a bank account

and leave it there by way of long-term savings. It is not a good

use of bank accounts. It is interesting listening to the three

of you, the human capacity for making mistakes over and over again

is enormous. It is bad enough when we do not learn from history but

when it is only six years old, it is really scary. There is no doubt that

this Government is intent on feeding the house price inflation that we

can see coming down over the next three to five years. Commentators

are talking about steady if not reasonably spectacular house price

inflation. Investors, speculators, those looking at buy to let, they

are looking at possible return is not just the yield, which is very

marginal in some parts of the country, they are just investing

purely for capital gain. That is what they are hoping for. Thank you.

Now an extraordinary story about a woman who died in the United States

in the 1950s and whose cells are still being used for medical

research. An agreement has finally been reached in a long running row

about how her cells may be used. The tobacco farmer and mother of five

was just 31 years old when two died of cervical cancer. During

treatment, some of her cancerous cells were removed without her

consent, not unusual for the time. What was unusual was that the cells

from that biopsy did something that scientists had never seen before.

They continued to live and grow indefinitely. The cells seemed to be

immortal. Over the last six decades, these cells have been used

in nearly 75,000 studies to develop treatments for conditions including

polio, leukaemia, haemophilia and Parkinson's. Making healthy profits

for pharmaceuticals companies. But Henrietta's family had no idea of

her legacy until 20 years after her death when they were contacted by

scientists looking for a blood sample. Earlier this year,

researchers in Germany decided to publish the full DNA code. The

family, worried that this could violate their own medical privacy,

took her concerns to the National Institutes of Health, the US

Government agency that oversees medical research. The family asked

not for money, but for some control over scientist access to the DNA

code, which was granted this week. Finally, more than 60 years after

Henrietta's death, it seems her contribution will finally be at

Joining me now from Chicago is Rebecca Skloot who has written a

book about Henrietta Lacks and her family, and was involved in the

negotiations which led to this settlement. This is an amazing

story. How important has this been for medical research, do you think?

Oh, you can't overestimate how important the cells have been for

science. They laid the foundation for so much of what we rely on now.

Her cells were the first ever cloned, her jeans with a first-ever

mapped. Some of the most important cancer medications... The list goes

on and on. They also laid the foundation for lots of basic

science. It is interesting that all of these good things are based on

something which sounds very brutal nowadays, taking the cells from

someone dying of cancer and using them without her permission. Yes, it

was absolutely standard at the time to take samples from people without

their permission. Sometimes much worse. We did not have the concept

of informed consent in the 50s. While it does sound shocking by

today's standards, a lot of what happened was pretty standard for the

day. What was different was when they went back to her children in

the 70s and did research on them without their consent. We did have

consent practices back then. In the 80s, their medical records were

released to the press and published without consent. His latest chapter

of the gene only in released without their consent is just one in a long

line of things that have happened to the family. So what managed to get

them to this agreement? There were several things. The first question

when they found out that this gene had been published, what does it

mean for us? What information is in there? They knew there was

information about Henrietta in there. Her children inherited half

of her jeans and her grandchildren half of those. They wanted to know

what the public could learn about them, what science could learn about

them from looking at the cells. Disease, things like that. But what

we know from history, every few decades something big happens with

these cells. Scientists and up going back and involving Henrietta

Lacks's family, usually without consent. The research has been

looked at over and over. They were also saying, enough. This is the

last time our generation should be the ones that this happens too. So

that our grandchildren are not shocked down the road when it

involves us. Why is that? I know that attitudes have changed, the way

that patients have been treated has changed, but is it basically because

she happened to be an impoverished African-American woman in the 50s

and people thought they could do what they like? In some ways that is

certainly part of it. She was seen in what they called the public

ward. That is where people went if they did not have money or they were

black because this was during segregation. She could not be

treated anywhere else. More research was definitely done in those places

than in the institutions where white patients with money ended up. In the

70s when they did the research on her children, I think race played a

more significant role in some ways. In the 50s they were taking cells

from anyone they could get their hands on and trying to grow them. In

the 70s, had her family been white, not being a black family who did not

have much money, and think the chances are things would have been

pretty different for them. Thank you very much for joining us from

Chicago and telling us that extraordinary story.

News that one of Italy's most wanted Mafiosi has been holed up in

Uxbridge sent us wondering whether the London suburbs really are a good

place for Cosa Nostra. Domenico Rancadore was sentenced to seven

years in prison in Italy and the Italian authorities want him back. A

court today heard that Mr Rancadore used the name Marc Skinner and did

not go out much. Stephen Smith has been to Uxbridge to see how they are

-land, at the end of John Betjeman's beloveds Metropolitan

line. A slumbering dormitory at the western extremity of Western London.

Christine Keeler was the most notorious person to come out of

Uxbridge until now. But it has emerged that the retired

schoolteacher who lived behind his head had been hiding for 20 odd

years. The man the neighbours knew as Marc Skinner was really Dominica

Rancadore, alleged Sicilian Mafia boss. Do you feel that you are

living in an episode of the Sopranos? Not really. He is the last

person that you would suspect. He certainly did not appear to be a

wise guy. People, some say unkind people, have said that Uxbridge is

just about the dullest place in London. So good camouflage? I would

dispute that. Why did think it is that dull here. But you never know,

do you? -- I don't think. He built up the conifer trees and put the big

gate on the front but we always thought he was Spanish and was

trying to produce a little courtyard community around Uxbridge. This chef

is from Elan himself and patrons at this restaurant have been digesting

the news. -- from Milan. Is it semi-glamorous to have someone from

the Mafia living amongst you? Or is it awful and terrible for the

neighbourhood? American culture has probably had a great influence on

how British people see things. The Sopranos, everyone thinks it is sexy

and glamorous to lead a crime boss life. Maybe if they come back and

think about that, they will think it is quite scary to have someone

involved in these very serious things, allegedly, lives round the

corner. The obvious thing is that we do not know our neighbours and that

is the key thing here. I am not saying that people should be careful

and paranoid. I am just impressed, a little, that he has managed to evade

the authorities for such a long time. Marc Skinner, or Rancadore,

was a model citizen as far as his fellow townsfolk new, frequenting

coffee shops, buying flowers at the stall outside the station. He is not

the first person to live a double life you. In 1922, under an assumed

name, someone was living just 100 metres from somewhere near where

Rancadore was living, at RAF Uxbridge. That person was actually

Lawrence of Arabia. If you want to be anonymous, it is a quiet in place

to fade into the background. Westminster Magistrates Court,

Rancadore was served a warrant for extradition to Italy where he has a

conviction for belonging to the Mafia. His wife and daughter heard

that he will be remanded in custody following a full extradition hearing

in November. Uxbridge is in the spotlight now, deservedly so, some

might say. What do we need to know about your town? If there are any

more fugitive Mafia dons out there, please get in touch.

Now here's one for the Jeremy Kyle Show. The father is either the

live-in lover in Edinburgh, who doesn't seem to want to make much

love. Or he is a dead German whose sperm was flown in. Nobody is even

sure if the mother is pregnant. We're talking giant pandas here and

the news that the female Tian Tian in Edinburgh Zoo may be preparing

for the patter of tiny claws. We can go over almost live by panda cam to

her mate in Edinburgh who may or may not be the father. It's not quite

Royal Baby Watch but there's no doubt that pandas are among the most

photogenic zoo stars. But is that a bit unfair to some of nature's more

aesthetically challenged creatures? Helen Arney is a member of the Ugly

Animal Preservation Society, a comedy night with a conservation

twist where she argues that pandas get too much attention and that more

help should be given to some of the less cuddly but equally endangered

species. She joins us now from Edinburgh where she is playing at

the Fringe. This is the biggest news about pregnancy since the Duchess of

Cambridge. But do we care too much about pandas, is that what you are

saying? With no offence to Edinburgh Zoo and the great work they are

doing with pandas, there is much more to the animal kingdom than

black and white bears. I have been watching the band camera for most of

the afternoon and frankly I would rather watch black and white paint

drying. There are much more fascinating animals out there that

are not beautiful. They are creepy, Crawley, ugly, grey, weird, but much

more interesting than the standard panda. You have made the case for

the purple pig nosed frock. We are looking at that now. You would not

buy your children are stuffed one of those four are present. You would

buy a panda. Pandas used to be the underdog. He used to sit around

eating bamboo, unable to do its business with its mate. But it is

not about what they look like, it is what they do. They do very little.

The axolotl is my favourite animal, fascinating. It lives in a single

lake in Mexico and is so endangered. It actually regenerates itself. If

you chop a little bit off, but don't do this at home, it will rebuild it

perfectly. If its skull gets crushed, it will rebuild it

perfectly. Scientists could use this to cure cancer and find out about

ageing. Fascinating stuff. We are looking at a picture of one of them

now. It is one of the most handsome ones I have seen in a long time!

That is actually logistic. Normal ones look like a block of concrete.

But are we missing out on these great animals that are much more

interesting by looking at the cuddly ones? Pandas is the only thing you

think of when you think of conservation, it is like URA DJ who

loves music but only plays Justin Bieber. -- like you are a DJ.

Conservation is not exotic. It is not something that comes from

far-flung countries. The European eel is one of the animals that has

lost 90% of its population in the last 40 years. Its travels 5000

miles. It migrates a huge journey. That is in the Thames. It is not

endangered because people have been serving it up in jelly in East and

restaurants. It is endangered because its habitat is being

destroyed. There is so much more interesting stuff out there than the

panda. The panda has been amazing for bringing attention to

conservation. Of course it is the logo for the WWF. Mostly because it

is black and white and very cheap to photocopy. Indeed! We have an animal

where we spent a lot of money trying to get them to conceive. They don't

seem to be willing or able to do it by themselves. In the end, there is

not much hope for them, is there? be absolutely honest, I think anyone

would have trouble having a full relationship with their partner, who

they have only met recently, when there were cameras on them and they

were living in somewhere completely different to their normal habitat.

You or I would have exactly the same problem. Right, we will avoid the

panda camera. Thank you very much. Let's look at the front pages. The

Times has Robert Mugabe selling uranium to Tehran in a secret deal.

The Telegraph has fetching picture, not of an axolotl but the panda on

the front page. And the panda is also on the front page of the

Guardian. And police investigating 169 sex abuse investigations. A move

to tackle predatory offices. A royal exclusive with the new father

allowed on a stag weekend. And the Daily Mail, the European flag to be

stamped on the UK birth certificate. All babies born in Britain could