29/10/2015 This Week

Tonight on This Week, a Westminster Horror Story.

Spine-chilling goings-on in Parliament,

The Mirror's hatchet man Kevin Maguire is trying to scare us.

The real horror show was at Parliament, as the house

of Lords came back to life to spook the Government, and Jeremy Corbyn

Has Chancellor George Osborne got the heebee-jeebies, after the defeat

Broadcaster and witchcraft expert Julia Hartley-Brewer is looking

I predict that George Osborne has a few more tricks up his sleeve, but

hopefully no more treats. And creating his own ghost

story, writer and broadcaster Melvyn Carving a pumpkin for this

programme. Absolutely mad. And remember, the next

scream you hear may be your own. Welcome to This Week, the programme

the BBC invented to make Top Gear And you join us pondering,

as we often do at this time of night, whether

our constitutional conventions The Government thinks not, after the

Lords came a-leaping to the defence Call-me-Dave drove a stake through

the heart of irony by tasking an unelected hereditary peer with the

job of stopping such a democratic Critics claim uppity peers breached

the so-called Sainsbury Convention, though I bet most of them shop

at Waitrose. Oh, sorry, the Salisbury Convention,

the doctrine that the Upper House should never stand in the way

of a Government measure if it was included in a manifesto,

which is debatable. Henceforth, no Government shall

claim a democratic mandate for any policy if, in the election campaign,

it repeatedly refused to answer any questions as to the likelihood of

the implementation of said policy, in the process reducing

a seasoned political journalist, who conducted numerous fruitless

interviews on the very subject, to a jibbering, seething ball

of political frustration. Let's call it the

Andrew Neil Convention, It's got

a nice constitutional ring to it. Speaking of getting absolutely

nowhere, I'm joined on the sofa tonight by two obscure Parliamentary

devices that no-one understands. Think of them as the fatal motion

and the fatal attraction I speak, of course,

of #barkingmadge - see what we did there - Margaret "Lady" Hodge,

and #sadmanonatrain Michael Big moment of the week obviously the

defeat of the Government in the Lords and we will talk about that.

Other than that, your moment. The Saudi ambassador to the UK talked

about an alarming change in our relationship with Saudi Arabia. I

would have thought many people might think there is an alarming lack of

change in our relationship with Saudi Arabia. In recent years there

have been hundreds of beheadings by sword in Saudi Arabia, it has a

dreadful human rights record. You might say that is an internal

matter. Then there is the export of an energetically fundamental part of

Islam, with its roots in Saudi Arabia. And its export has

potentially volcanic effects. Certainly many had here and is seen

to be prone to being persuaded towards terrorism. So I think many

people I be surprised there has not been a change of attitude towards

Saudi Arabia given its human rights record, and also the threat it poses

to other countries in the globe. If the Saudi ambassador thinks things

are bad, I hope he has gone to sleep by the time we get to a later bit in

the script. Your moment. I was thinking about breaking taboos in

Parliament and the new politics where we talk about issues we have

not talked about in the past. We talked about tampons and sanitary

towels on the floor of the house, and Stella Creasy managed to get

Bill Cash to not talk about sanitary products but to talk about tampons.

It reminded me of the torn Prom Rollo, who was Treasury minister

when she brought in the first reduction in the VAT on tampons, and

she had a fantastic battle with her civil servants, who said she was

bringing gender discrimination into policies around VAT. She said, if

you can find something that is an essential product for men, I will

look at whether we should reduce VAT on that. They came back and said

they had found circumcision knives as being subject to VAT at 20%. I

know that is a joke, but the serious point is that in the new politics we

ought to have openness and willingness to talk about things

that matter to ordinary people, and tampons and sanitary towels do

matter a lot to women a lot of the time. Tampons are subject to VAT and

male razors are not. Mail raisers are as well, and that may be an

argument. But men can grow beards. I know not on this programme. Enough!

That is a whole book! Now, how many times can you

refuse to answer a question? Six, it seems, if you're the Prime

Minister and the answer involves guaranteeing nobody on tax credits

will end up being worse off. But what if making people worse

off now, makes them better off The Government has,

for obvious reasons, been somewhat reluctant to put

the argument in such stark terms. But maybe the whole point is

about changing people's expectations And one fearless, or crazy,

woman is prepared to make the case. Here's journalist

Julie Hartley-Brewer, We all need a safety net or,

in my case right now, a crash mat. But why should I,

like every other taxpayer, be expected to pick up the pieces of

someone else's lifestyle choices? The attacks on George Osborne's

plans for tax credit cuts have now The delivery has been pushed back

after a rogue vote in the But is all the rhetoric

about how these cuts are cruel, immoral attack on

hard-working families really true? Every day we hear stories about

families doing the right thing. They are working long hours

for low pay and they are still Behind the myth, the facts tell

a rather different story. The truth is that many of

the people who rely on tax credits are not poor because they earn low

wages, but because of the choices A choice to work part-time or,

in some cases, not at all, or, a choice to have more children than

they can afford. For seven out

of ten couples claiming working tax credits, only one adult is working,

whether they have got kids or not. In a third of households,

no-one is working full-time at all. Is it really any wonder that couples

who work just a few days a week between them cannot afford to

make ends meet? Meanwhile, 84,000 families

claiming tax credits have Could you afford to raise

five kids on your wage? Yes, of course, there are plenty

of deserving families who genuinely do need tax credits but there are

far too many who simply expect everyone else to pick up the bill

for their lifestyle choices. Tax credits were supposed to

get people back into work. Instead they have become

an alternative to getting a job. They were supposed to be

a safety net, not a tangled web. The Chancellor should go

ahead with the cuts. Judging by the current debate,

the only thing likely to fall any And from oxygen free jumping

in Acton to our own little compression chamber,

Julia Hartley-Brewer joins us now. Michael, do you agree that many who

rely on tax credits are only poor because they decided to work

part-time or they have had too many kids they can't afford? I don't know

enough about it to make that judgment but one of the decisions

people clearly make is how many children they are going to have. And

one of the reasons tax credits exist is that employers pay wages

according to what they think the Labour is worth, not according to

Harmony children they think their employee has got. And the state does

step in to make up the difference. You are shaking your head. I think

people have forgotten why we brought in tax credits. It is cumbersome,

very expensive, open to fraud and error, but we brought it in for two

reasons. One, we wanted to make work pay, and the other was that we

wanted to target those who needed it most and you cannot do that through

raising personal allowances. Because everybody benefits. Yes. Where you

are wrong is that there are people who are working 16 hours or so a

week. But if you take away the tax credit, then it no longer is worth

their while working. So it is getting them into work, into the

habit of working. And as their kids grow up they may go full-time. One

final point. I wanted Julia to come back. I understand that incentive

but it also provides a disincentive. After 16 hours, 24 hours for a

couple, if you work any extra time your marginal rate is so high, so

what's the point of going out for extra hours if you can get the money

for free? It is not worth the while for the person in that situation but

it is worthwhile for the taxpayer who is paying it otherwise. I can

come back with the same argument and say that if you take it away what

will happen, and a couple of think tanks have come out with this this

week, your marginal rate of taxation for going in and doing ten hours a

week goes up. It is 93%. Doesn't that make it worse? Reed thereof

problems with the changes. I don't think it is beyond the wit of man or

the Chancellor of the Exchequer to come up with a way of making the

changes. You have to have an incentive where it is sensible for

both parents to work. Most parents do actually work full-time. Seven

out of ten claimants of working tax credit have only one adult in work

because the 2nd adult is viewed, like the child, as a dependent. That

is an extraordinary figure. We are told constantly that people claiming

tax credit are the hard working poor, and undoubtedly many of them

are, but also there are an awful lot who are not hard working poor. They

are poor because they don't do enough hours. But seven out of ten

of the people who benefit from tax credit are women. They also have

childcare responsibilities. That is the point at which they are poorest.

We spend ?30 billion per year on this. Is that too much? It is a

redistribution, maybe that is something that should be welcomed,

or is it too much? It is a very cumbersome tax. It is open to huge

error and huge fraud. I would like us to get round the table. Really it

is one of those issues where you have to get round the table. We all

want to make work pay, so get round the table and sort it out. I don't

think it is as easy as you say, the Chancellor can sort it out. It

reminds me of the debate in the 1960s and 70s where the Tories felt

they could not reverse the Labour ratchet. Labour had created a

welfare state but also nationalised industries and so on and there

seemed no way of working back. Gordon Brown set the bar of the

welfare state extremely high. He set a high water mark and it seems the

argument is that wherever the previous Labour government has set

the high water mark, the Tory government is not allowed to reduce

the water level in the next period of government. They took away tax

credits from the better off. That has changed. But 30 billion. It is

still 30 billion. Here is the issue. Getting from a to B is a problem,

and under the existing plans low paid workers are going to lose a lot

of money. It may not seem so much to those on big salaries but if you are

only on 15,000 a year, 12,000 a year, and you lose 1200, 1500, that

is a lot of money. You dis- incentivise people by not making the

2nd adult, usually the woman, as a dependent and basically have them

entitled to working tax credits in their own right, which will

incentivise them to work. I know people who work in job centres who

have told me it is routine that people on tax credits will come in

and say, I work 16 hours, 24 hours a week, I have been offered a

full-time job, is it worth my while? When they point out that it

is not worth their while and they will not earn an extra penny for

those extra hours, they turn it down. That is an insane state of

affairs. You have been talking about the proposals. The proposals are now

dead and we will get something else in the Autumn Statement. Will we

just get eight week? I think we will get a big tweak. It seemed at first

that it was the clever that the Liberal and Labour Democrat peers

had voted down the order and made a bit of a monkey of the Chancellor of

the Exchequer. It would have been much cleverer to let it go through,

because at the moment all of the argument is about people making

theoretical losses. Nobody has made a loss yet. It may be that the --

that the Chancellor will make changes which will mean no one will

make a loss, or fewer people. What would have been clever would have

been to saddle the Chancellor of the Exchequer with his original

proposal, because I believe it would have become very uncomfortable

politically if 3 million people lost ?1000 per year. Has George Osborne

been hurt by this? Undoubtedly. He does not seem as sure-footed. He has

often been seen as a great political operator. People keep saying that,

but remember 2012 and now this. Yes, but a lot of the outcry about

this, over 3 million voters affected, but also that most people

who debate this do not understand that so many of those who claim

working tax credit and child tax credits are not what most people

consider the hard-working poor. The people who are paying for the tax

credits, they are the hard-working people, the people whom arm and dad,

with or without young children, who go out and work full-time.

The reason the Chancellor should be worried, and I agree with Michael,

politically it would have been terrible for the families.

Politically it would have been more sensible to have let the pain be

there. A lot of them are in Conservative marginal seats. If

Labour gets its act together we might win them back. Even if you get

the tax credit, I have 10,000 families in my constituency who will

be affected by the changes in the tax credit. They could have done it

more sensibly and said, it new applicants. I am not in charge! Just

to finish up on this point. It does involve some hard-working families.

Julia has said that. She said most of the hard-working whether ones

paying the 30 billion. A lot of people who are upset by the changes

are not aware of the fact that a lot of people we are referring to with

the little phrase, hard-working families, between them as a couple

working three days a week out of ten. If most families are working

ten days a week between them, to people five days a week each and

they are paying taxes to fund supposedly hard-working people

working three out of ten days they might feel what the solution should

be is for those people to work more hours. They need time to be able to

do that. There is an assumption that most people working tax credits are

like that. They are not, they are a minority. I know from own

constituency... We are going to leave it there. We will have plenty

of time to do that between now and the Autumn Statement. Thank you for

being with us. Now it's late,

Bad Sex Award winner-late, which is fortunate because look

who's waiting in the wings. Author and broadcaster Melvyn Bragg

is here to talk about the dangers And if you assume we care

about your views, you could not, of course, be more wrong,

as we continue to ignore all your mind-numbing comments on The

Twitter, The Fleecebook and Gordon Now, the new ITV drama Jekyll

and Hyde came under fire this week, after viewers called it

"too scary" to be broadcast before Well, we're not on

in the primetime 11:35pm slot for nothing, so we thought we'd

make the most of our scheduling - to unleash something truly terrifying

on an unsuspecting viewing public. We sent the Mirror journalist

down to the London Dungeon This is his split personality

roundup of the week. I'm going to tell you

a very scary story. The strange case of Dr George

Osborne and Mr Gideon Hyde. By day, Dr Osborne likes to show his

respectable side as a blue blood, By night,

out comes his Tory monster. Mr Gideon, desperate to stamp

on people's incomes I am determined to deliver that

lower welfare, higher wage economy we

were elected to deliver I warned you it was

going to be scary. The struggling strivers found

an unlikely champion in the House of Lords this week,

as the living dead in the other So, Osborne was shocked

into an embarrassing retreat on Monday night when peers voted to

delay tax credit cuts and compensate Conservative MPs - not me - say they

did not have the information they I hear that many

of them are now livid about this. The point is, this was a budgetary

matter and budgetary matters are the Mr Cameron, who deliberately

misled the British public. The British public would regard what

he said now as a lie, That is a fig leaf, possibly

disguising tensions in the Commons There are even more cobwebs

in here than in the House of Lords. Spooky how, after Monday's double

defeat, so many Tories are now talking about reforming

the unelected House of cronies. I think it's wrong of the House

of Lords to get in the way of the sovereign expression

of will of Parliament. Like a zombie you can't kill off,

how ever many fatal motions you try, the deadly issue of tax credits

is haunting the Government and raised its head again and again and

again at Prime Monster's Questions. Can he now guarantee to the House

and the wider country that nobody will

be worse off next year as a result Will he confirm right now

that tax credit cuts will Can he now give us the answer

we are trying to get today? The Labour Party is left defending

and depending on unelected peers We have got, in British politics,

we have a new alliance - Even rarer than a ghost was

a reported sighting of a Lib Dem. Let me again welcome the honourable

gentleman to this place. It is good to see such

a high turnout of his MPs. When it comes to Europe,

Britain's big political parties have David Cameron is officially supposed

to be neutral while he does the renegotiations yet the Prime

Minister flew to Iceland to attack the Eurosceptic case, though we are

told he will also have a go at the pro-EU camp if he feels it is

overstepping a mark. Talk If we don't get what we need,

I rule absolutely nothing out. As we go through this debate, let's

make sure we don't start looking The court of public opinion long ago

judged Tony Blair guilty on Iraq. Yet, however tortured he looks, the

spectre of war's past has remained With the Chilcott Report looming,

Blair used an interview at the weekend to apologise for

mistakes made and admitted there were elements of truth in claims

that the war contributed to the rise You cannot say that those

of us who removed Saddam in 2003 bear no responsibility

for the situation in 2015. And from the London Dungeon

on Southbank, to our own little house of horrors

here in the heart of Westminster, we're joined by a man who, among

other claims to fame, once played a Welcome back. Are the Lord's right

to defy the Commons on this subject? Yes. Because? If it was a tax, it

would have been in the Finance Bill. If you get something like this, if

you're going to defy the Government on an economic matter and you have

to have grounds to choose, the House of Lords, being able to present

themselves as a defender of the working classes, what could be

better? How inept of the Government! To get into this

situation? Given the measure will now be changed, the undermining of

the tonsil' reputation for competence and the Government's

reputation for economic credibility is done. They are trying to show the

Conservatives as the party of the workers. We are now the party of the

workers. We will park our tanks onto Labour's lawn and have ?4.5 billion

worth of tax cuts coming down the pipe. You will have to go back to

Julie's argument. People can be paying taxes who are fairly poor.

Can I just agree with the first part of what Alex said? The whole reason

this statutory instrument was considered by the House of Lords

was, surprise surprise, in legislation it is specified this

statutory instrument has two passed both houses of parliament. It is the

statutory interest -- instrument under social legislation. If you put

it to the House of Commons, the House of Commons would not wish to

view the sledgehammer and vote it down. If you offer the House of

Lords something which requires approval, they are just as likely to

disprove it. I think they have saved George's bacon. He will not be

saddled with it. I think there is a slightly naive point. Very often,

politicians push something out and feed at what point the resistance

comes. Then they withdraw it. Very often, it is the only way you can

really gauge what you can get away with in politics. Many people have

done this in the past. It is the way things go. Have the Lords now got a

taste of blood? They have already rebelled about 19 times against the

Government in recent times. This may give them... They may make a habit

of this. They may rather like it. When you said my known for the week,

it was the defeat on tax credits. If we're going to talk about reforming

the House of Lords yet again, in maybe a tiny opportunity... Is

crazy. Looking it up to date, we have 850 peers. It is the second

largest Parliamentary house after the Chinese. If you look at

parliamentary chambers which have non-elected, either directly or

indirectly, we're in the bottom 10%. Jeremy Corbyn, promise me you will

never go there? The House of Lords? I promise. Let's reform it. Everyone

thinks it should be reform but this will not be an opportunity to so do,

will it? Yet if you're going for the Lords, some of the Tory backbenches

have been doing over the past few days, off with their heads! I do not

think this is the issue with which she would choose to decapitate the

House of Lords. I was not talking about back, I was talking about

reforming it. If they were to appoint lots of Lord's, it would be

more absurd than many people think it is. I still do not see how that

would lead in this Parliament to reform of the House of Lords. The

only sensible reform of the House of Lords within the current system

would be to make it a perform shall Assembly elected. If they did that

with the addition of the SNP, you would have approximately the same

result as this week. A proportional Assembly would give you probably the

same result. The Government would not have an overall majority. What

do you make of the length of time the Chilcott report is taking? I

think it looks like extraordinary mismanagement and incompetence.

There is simply no point moaning and enquired for this length of time.

The answers are not relevant. -- running an inquiry. Was the inquiry

fundamentally flawed? Should it not have been given a timetable? Was it

badly tasked for the job? It was set up to deal with a bad political

moment. It is absurd. I do not think there is a politician who is active

today who does not want to see an end to this so we can draw a line

under that very, very difficult period in our politics. Should it

have been time-limited? This is outrageous and unjust for the

families of the dead service people. People have no closure, wondering

why their loved ones died, what was the reason, who was responsible. It

is unjust. There is an assumption that we will no much more when we

get the results of being quiet area. I agree with you, and we will wait

and see what it says, but I think the assumption and build-up of

expectation might lead to disappointment among the families. I

think there is little doubt that a judge leading choir would have been

quicker. A parliamentary enquiry would have been able to impeach the

Prime Minister, as some of us wanted. But any parliamentary

enquiry would have reported long ago. But there must be better ways

to do things. Is there going to be anything out of this? I am not so

sure, I would not be so dismissive. The key issue is predetermination.

Did Tony Blair make up his mind before the evidence to go to war in

Iraq, come what May? And there is pretty substantial information, both

from the former British ambassador in Washington, and more recently

from the Colin Powell e-mails, that that was the case. If Chilcot has

grabbed hold of that, with the additional information which he

presumably has from telegrams and exchange of information between the

British and US government, I would not discount the possibility. This

might be an enquiry which allocates responsibility. I would not be

surprised if that was the finding but I would not be as outraged as

you. I think Tony Blair, in the moment of 9/11, when thousands of

Americans died, he pledged, I think, himself, the Labour Party and

the British government to support the United States through thick and

thin, and even through error. I think that is precisely what

happened. But that is not what he told the country. He told us there

were weapons of mass destruction, 45 minutes from disaster. If it is

predetermined, he is responsible and guilty as charged. Do you think

there is evidence it was predetermined? I have seen none of

that evidence and I was one who voted for the Iraq war. Do you

regret that? Yes. If I had known then what I know now I would not

have voted in that way. We can go round and round, but putting myself

back into what we believed at that time, we all believed there were

weapons of mass destruction. You may not have done, but most people

believed there were weapons of mass destruction. The real argument was

of timing of when we should go in, whether we should allow the UN

longer to find them and identify them. I think it was to reflect

error. Some of us relied on the information that was coming from

Hans Blix and the UN inspectors. He believed there were weapons of mass

destruction. He asked for time and did not get it. We found out that

the pledge to go to war, come what may, to be with George W Bush was

made. It was not come what may. We have seen that recently in his memo.

It was not come what may. The 2nd thing was the offer to help with

public opinion. I saw that. I think that is highly significant. So I am

hopeful that responsibility will be allocated. Good to see you.

Now, New York-based author Martin Amis, somehow under

the impression we care what he thinks about British politics, had

According to the author, "humourless" Jezza is not

intellectually up to being Leader of the Labour Party - apparently his

two Es at A Level, and one year on a Trade Union Studies course at North

London Poly are not the ideal qualifications

It's far better than doing two or even three years on a Trade Union

And that's why we're putting "making assumptions" in this week's

# You want to see whatever common people see... #

It was the anthem for a class conscious Britain, but

20 years after Pulp hit the charts, does society still make assumptions

about who you are and where you come from? On Monday David Cameron

announced that universities and top employers will now do

name-blind applications, after research suggested ethnic sounding

If you don't deal with the issue of discrimination,

you can never have true opportunity, which is what we all want to see.

Few would have imagined the boy brought up above a Cumbrian

pub would become the nation's cultural expert.

But does Melvyn Bragg's novel about the peasants' revolt of 1381

remind us that people have fought social assumptions for centuries?

Who would have thought that during the peers' revolt

of 2015 ermine-clad lords and ladies would be the ones

These proposals blatantly threaten damage to the lives of millions

So maybe it doesn't matter whether you live like common people

Is making assumptions about others, whether based on race or class or

We are delighted to be joined by Melvyn Bragg. Working-class kid gets

to Oxbridge, people make assumptions about you? They can assume what they

want, that is their right. Did you ever feel categorised? Yes, but it

doesn't matter very much. You get on with what you want to do and if you

are lucky enough to do it, that is enough. Did it hold you back? I have

done what I want, and what more could you want? We have a tendency

in this country to categorise. Noel Coward said an Englishman opens his

mouth and another Englishman has clattered -- classified him. That is

still largely true. We still say people from whatever city in the

North of England have the least chance of being believed in court,

getting jobs. It still goes on. Is it part of this class system,

obsession with class that we make assumptions about people in a way

that other countries may not as much? Other countries do, but not as

clearly, with 800 years of tradition behind them. We have got very good

at it. We have had practice. It has changed quite a bit but it is still

solid, a class system, but there are other things which corrode and

embellish it simultaneously, so it is changing. In the 21st century,

the Prime Minister is saying that for big companies, for universities,

don't put your name on the application form. And when they

don't put their name, a lot of people from state schools get the

job and the universities. When you look at university results, people

at state schools tend to do rather better if they can get in. You see

it at Oxford as well as everywhere else. Is it useful, because the

Prime Minister was saying there seemed to be evidence that if it was

an ethnic name then you might not get through the first hurdle? There

might be that. It is difficult to talk about this without more

evidence than I have. I know what I read in newspapers, what I hear from

Leeds, where I am Chancellor, or from Oxford, but it is basically

anecdotal. Since I went to university, 5% go, and now it is

45%. I go to Leeds University regularly, and I have been there for

about 14 years, and you see people from all parts there. Similarly at

my college in Oxford, the most diverse College in Oxford, it has

changed a lot and that is something to hold onto. Changed for the

better, I think, and so do those in charge, the Chuter is something to

hold onto. Changed for the better, I think, and so do those in charge,

the are we prone to make assumptions? Yes, for example we

debated at the last parliament where all of the leaders were Oxbridge by

background, the fact that this created a barrier between them and

the electorate. I think it did. The electorate thought anyone who had

been to Oxford or Cambridge was from Mars. That was interesting because

at one time the Labour Party were hopeful that they would paint David

Cameron and George Osborne has remote toffs. But as far as the

electorate were concerned Ed Miliband and others were just as

remote. I think we are more anti-intellectual than most other

countries. Are we prone to make assumptions? It is more convex than

class. It is about race, gender, all these things. There is evidence,

certainly on race, I don't know about university applications, but

if you look at job applications, if you have a name which puts you down

as someone from an ethnic background, you are much, much less

likely to get an interview, to get through that first hurdle. I welcome

what the Prime Minister is doing on this. It is a move in the right

direction. I don't think it is enough. My children's friends who

tried for Oxford, from comprehensive schools, it is not just getting to

interview stage, but people recruit in their own kind. The questions

that they ask when you go for the interview are very much based on the

sort of stuff you would learn if you went to a private school, rather

than a comprehensive, so the barriers are complex and I think it

needs a complex set of interventions. This country, unlike

France and America, has a lot of continuity in its history. You have

done a book on the peasant's revolt, which failed in the end. If it had

succeeded in some way, would we be a much different society? If we had

had more revolutionary upheaval? When is the end? It depends what you

mean by failed. It is the biggest insurrection ever in this country,

per capita. It came at the time of the Black death, the population was

being halved. It pushed up some wages and depressed others. It was

led by Artisans, all the men, people were not just running around with

pitchforks. Although the pitchfork is a nasty weapon. It was a debate

across what we would now describe as the middle and lower middle-class

is, the lower gentry. It was a big rebellion and massively successful

until the leader was assassinated. In a few days, it takes one of the

toughest castles in the country in an afternoon, which took King John

nine months to breach. It gets into London, into the White Tower, it

forces the king to meet them three times. In that sense it is

successful. It fails, but it sets the tone for what has become since

then one stream of English history which is radical. And the idea that

people rebelling, triggered often by taxes, this was triggered by the

poll tax, and people gathering round it to rebel and move to rebellion,

whether it is marching, whatever. A great book, I enjoyed it. Thank you

for being with us. But not for us

because it's "flogging a pensioner Well, it is in Mayfair, and just

opposite the Saudi embassy. But we leave you tonight with

the man of the hour - Boy George. His minions have been scurrying

around Westminster all week, assuring us all that George is

"always in listening mode" when it And we have exclusive footage

that proves they weren't lying. Don't let Michael Gove's

general election commitment Just to be clear,

because I think you said this but I want to be certain, when I asked,

are you going to cut tax credits, We are going to freeze them for two

years, we are not going to cut them. I wanted to spend the rest of my

life with him.