:00:08. > :00:12.Thank you. Tonight on Newsnight Scotland: Well are you excited
:00:12. > :00:16.about the local election campaign? Would you be excited if you could
:00:16. > :00:20.vote for a mayor? Why can't Scotland's cities have their own
:00:20. > :00:28.version of the Ken and Boris show in London? Also tonight, the Scot
:00:28. > :00:31.who provided the scientific link between Newton and Einstein. Why is
:00:31. > :00:33.James Clerk Maxwell so little celebrated in his own land? Good
:00:33. > :00:36.evening. Three weeks tonight we'll be considering how the election
:00:36. > :00:39.went. 32 two local authorities, more than 1,000 council seats at
:00:39. > :00:42.stake and more than �20 billion of taxpayers' money to spend. So why
:00:42. > :00:45.do so few us seem committed to voting? Would a few mayoral
:00:45. > :00:55.contests along the lines of the London elections spark some
:00:55. > :00:57.
:00:57. > :01:05.interest? Here's David Allison. haven't apologised for calling him
:01:05. > :01:09.a liar. Do you want to? No There is no doubt in certain circumstances a
:01:09. > :01:15.mayoral election can make entertaining television. Boris
:01:15. > :01:19.Johnson earning �140,000 as mayor and gets a quarter of a million
:01:19. > :01:24.from the Daily Telegraph. The only income I will have will be from the
:01:24. > :01:28.job. He did a write a column when he was mayor for the Independent.
:01:28. > :01:32.I'm probably the only human being to have read all of columns for
:01:32. > :01:38.which he was paid, I don't know what. And it was obvious reading
:01:38. > :01:43.them, why he did not continue in that. While Londoners seem to have
:01:43. > :01:48.taken to to concept of a city mayor, it has not always worked. In
:01:48. > :01:58.Hartlepool they have elected and re-elected a man dressed as a
:01:58. > :02:00.
:02:00. > :02:06.monkey. A throw back to ta -- to the Napoleonic wars when a monkey
:02:06. > :02:12.was hung as being a French spy. But some in Birmingham will elect a
:02:12. > :02:16.mayor. In the wake of nine lever, the New York mayor was praised for
:02:16. > :02:23.holding together the city. I wanted to make sure everything is here
:02:23. > :02:27.that could be here. Before that, in the 80s when he introduced a zero
:02:27. > :02:37.tolerance campaign, the power of American mayors prompted thought
:02:37. > :02:39.
:02:39. > :02:45.here. It is if New York can do it. In 83, Mr Happy while our version
:02:45. > :02:51.with Michael Kelly taking on a mayor-like role. Others carried on
:02:51. > :02:56.the high profile approach to help regenerate the city. But now, local
:02:56. > :03:03.councils can only raise about 10% of the money they spend and often
:03:03. > :03:06.choice in how they carve up the financial cake is pre-determined by
:03:06. > :03:10.statutory requirements. We have only just reorganised local
:03:10. > :03:15.Government with PR and these are the first elections free standing
:03:15. > :03:21.under that system. So perhaps we need more time before any further
:03:21. > :03:26.changes are considered. But how may things in Edinburgh have been if
:03:26. > :03:32.they had had a mayor leading the city through tram problems and
:03:32. > :03:37.would Aberdeen have got its bypass years ago and would a mayor there
:03:37. > :03:42.have had a few on the Union Street Gardens development. George
:03:42. > :03:46.Galloway is elected. George Galloway, once of this parish and
:03:46. > :03:49.rejected by voters in Glasgow at the Holyrood elections, won't a by-
:03:49. > :03:54.election in Bradford west two week ago and argued that much of his
:03:54. > :03:58.success was due to a disconnect between modern politics and the
:03:58. > :04:03.public. There is a paradigm shift that the Tweedling Dee, Tweedle
:04:03. > :04:11.dumb and a half, if a backside could have three cliques, they're
:04:11. > :04:15.sitting in the louse of commons. -- three chex., they're -- cheeks,
:04:15. > :04:21.they're sitting in the house of commons. They all sands stand for
:04:21. > :04:26.the same things. So would mayor here mean more tweedsle Dee and
:04:26. > :04:32.Tweedle dumb, 0 would a system help reinforce local accountability and
:04:33. > :04:35.reengage the public in local government? I'm joined from
:04:35. > :04:38.Edinburgh by the Scotsman columnist Joyce McMillan and from London by
:04:38. > :04:42.Professor Tony Travers of the LSE, one of the architects of the
:04:42. > :04:48.original plan to create the office of Mayor of London. You're slightly
:04:48. > :04:52.convince rd you by the case of having mayors here? Not really. If
:04:52. > :04:56.you look at the issues arising around local government which were
:04:56. > :05:01.mentioned in the report there, issues to do with the inability of
:05:01. > :05:05.local government now to raise most of the money it spends, it is look
:05:05. > :05:09.of autonomy and Tex tent of which it is an agency of central
:05:09. > :05:12.government, I don't see thousand direct election of a mayor helps.
:05:12. > :05:17.Its almost as if we're saying the politics of local Government has
:05:17. > :05:20.died and the only way to get people interested is to turn it into a
:05:20. > :05:26.celebrity contest. I think that is a patronising way to treat the
:05:26. > :05:29.electorate. I don't think it improves accountability. It would
:05:29. > :05:33.wouldn't necessarily be a celebrity competition? Yes the point is
:05:33. > :05:38.people will be more interested allegedly if there is a face off
:05:38. > :05:44.between two or three individuals, rather than an actual discussion
:05:44. > :05:48.around policy and choices made in individual wards and then a mayoral
:05:48. > :05:54.provost elected by the council. The allegation is that people are not
:05:54. > :05:58.too dim to get vested in the -- interested in the issues and you
:05:58. > :06:04.have to have partyys represented by strong and recognisable figures to
:06:04. > :06:09.get people interested. I do think it is patronising and doesn't
:06:09. > :06:13.address the problems in the least. Bring us up to date on what is
:06:13. > :06:21.happening in England. We have the Boris Johnson and Ken Livingstone
:06:21. > :06:26.show. And other cities to elect mayors for the fist time and some
:06:26. > :06:32.to have refr dumbs on whether to do it. Liverpool has decided to go for
:06:32. > :06:38.a mayor. That is the first big city. We have other smaller cities,
:06:38. > :06:42.Leicester in particular, that have gone for elected mayors. Liverpool
:06:42. > :06:48.will vote about their mayor for the first time. On the same day there
:06:48. > :06:53.is a referendum in Birmingham, Leeds, Manchester, Brits toll,
:06:53. > :06:57.Sheffield and other cities and the polls suggest that Birmingham
:06:57. > :07:02.probably Leeds, possibly Sheffield and conceivably Bristol at least
:07:02. > :07:07.will decide to go for mayors. Thus creating a galaxy of them in
:07:07. > :07:12.England, rather than just one big one in London and a medium size one
:07:12. > :07:17.in Leicester. What is your view of the experience there so far. Do you
:07:17. > :07:23.think it has, as Joyce McMillan suggested, just become celebrities
:07:23. > :07:30.substituting for politics, or has it got people more engaged in the
:07:30. > :07:36.process? The London contest may not be absolutely representative. The
:07:36. > :07:39.Ken versus Boris show is pretty celebrity-driven. But actually in
:07:40. > :07:44.other places, it has not been like that. It probably won't be like
:07:44. > :07:49.that in Liverpool. In Birmingham, assuming they do vote to have the a
:07:49. > :07:54.mayor, there is evidence that MP will want to leave Parliament such
:07:54. > :07:59.as Liam Byrne, serious MPs, who would like to join the fray,
:07:59. > :08:06.perhaps to become mayor in Birmingham. I do agree with skrois
:08:06. > :08:11.in the sense that -- joiz in the sense that we want more power for
:08:11. > :08:15.local government. What seev seen in London is the office of mayor pulls
:08:15. > :08:20.power from central government in London and in this is case, but
:08:20. > :08:25.does create pressure to draw power down from the centre and I think it
:08:25. > :08:31.probably would help in delivering more power at the local level.
:08:31. > :08:35.do you think of that? Isn't there an rgment to say that having a
:08:35. > :08:41.figurehead would increase the profile of cities like Aberdeen or
:08:41. > :08:46.Dundee? The thing is we do have figureheads. Either this is about
:08:46. > :08:51.getting celebrities into politics, because they fancy the job and so
:08:51. > :08:58.it is about celebrity culture. Or it is about politics. In which case,
:08:58. > :09:04.what is wrong the current system. You know there have been tremendous
:09:04. > :09:09.civic leaders elected. The most famous mayor in the history of the
:09:09. > :09:13.UK, Joseph Chamberlain were not directsly elected. He was elected
:09:13. > :09:18.by councillors. There was a time when that system could produce
:09:19. > :09:23.really major leaders and before we do this move, before we stick this
:09:23. > :09:28.stick plaster on a our local democracy I would like to see more
:09:28. > :09:31.analysis of why that is not happening now. Why don't we have
:09:31. > :09:35.civic leaders of that statedure emerging through the system of
:09:35. > :09:38.elections. And choice by the council. And I don't think it is
:09:38. > :09:43.because there is no direct elections. I think its is because
:09:43. > :09:48.there is not enough power there and the similar is wrong. There would
:09:48. > :09:52.be situations sometimes where maybe a good or effective directly
:09:52. > :09:56.elected mayor could bully the Government into devolving more
:09:56. > :10:02.power and where that workers well and goods. But it is a desperate
:10:02. > :10:11.last throw and not based on a real and si of what has gone wrong with
:10:11. > :10:16.Let's forget London, because London is like New York, whoever becomes
:10:16. > :10:20.the mayor of London is going to become a very powerful political
:10:20. > :10:26.figure, given the size of London relative to the rest of the UK. But
:10:26. > :10:31.outside of London, doesn't she have a point? You couldn't get a bus
:10:31. > :10:36.ticket between us on our views about Britain losing power over
:10:36. > :10:40.time, but I think the way that politics has had to adapt to the
:10:40. > :10:45.media age that we are in, and I take the point about celebrities,
:10:45. > :10:49.but having a visible figurehead is an element in getting your city
:10:49. > :10:54.really noticed, and I think there is a challenge here for cities in
:10:54. > :11:02.Britain that perhaps do not choose to have a mayor. Let's say
:11:02. > :11:12.Birmingham, Leeds, Bristol, possibly liveable decide not to
:11:12. > :11:17.
:11:17. > :11:27.have a net, they... Then Glasgow, Edinburgh, Aberdeen might get a bit
:11:27. > :11:33.
:11:33. > :11:42.nervous. The mayor of partner Paul -- Hartlepool S C was a mass got at
:11:42. > :11:52.Hartlepool FC. He has been re- elected twice. He precisely makes
:11:52. > :11:52.
:11:52. > :11:55.the point. When mares were new --, when Stuart Drummond was first
:11:55. > :12:03.elected, it was seen as a bit of a joke, but he has been re-elected
:12:03. > :12:07.twice, I think, and is seen as a serious mayor, and in Middlesbrough,
:12:07. > :12:11.Watford and other places in England and some London boroughs, it has
:12:11. > :12:20.worked perfectly well, and hasn't led to the sky at forming a --
:12:20. > :12:25.falling in. I am curious. You talk about the diminution in terms of
:12:25. > :12:30.the local authorities, but there has not been much popular reaction
:12:30. > :12:36.to that. You complain about it, but the population at large do not
:12:36. > :12:40.particularly seen to beat up an -- up in arms about it. No. I think
:12:40. > :12:49.there is something quite broken about the system. If you ask people
:12:49. > :12:52.in principle whether they want local power, then getting them
:12:53. > :12:57.anything interested could -- getting anyone interested in
:12:57. > :13:01.anything bigger -- smaller than a national election is difficult,
:13:01. > :13:06.because they see it as something that happens in the media rather
:13:06. > :13:13.than on their street. It is very profound. It is about the reduction
:13:13. > :13:19.of politics to a gladiatorial spectator sport, or show business.
:13:19. > :13:29.Rather than something that actually reflects everyone's day-to-day life
:13:29. > :13:31.
:13:31. > :13:35.on the street. I am not 100 % sure about having direct leak elected
:13:35. > :13:40.mayors. They are individual circumstances where it can work,
:13:40. > :13:47.and maybe Hartlepool is one of those examples. But it does not get
:13:47. > :13:56.to the systemic point. Even in London, it is not clear that having
:13:56. > :14:04.a mayor has had led to a revival of municipal politics we had in the
:14:04. > :14:09.1920s and 1930s? No, and she is right that the local authorities
:14:09. > :14:14.have been diminished. But the turnout in the last mayoral
:14:14. > :14:21.election was 45 %, quite high by any local election standard. And
:14:21. > :14:26.there was a damp -- there wasn't an opinion poll -- there was an
:14:26. > :14:30.opinion poll suggesting that most Londoners like the idea of an
:14:30. > :14:34.elected mayor. That is pretty successful. Thank you both very
:14:34. > :14:39.much. Edinburgh's International Science Festival is moving into its
:14:39. > :14:46.final weekend, but before it ends, there is going to beat and we
:14:47. > :14:52.creation of an event that happened at 150 years ago. A colour
:14:52. > :15:02.photograph was created. He is the link between Newton and Einstein,
:15:02. > :15:04.
:15:04. > :15:14.Genius is an over-used word, but not in the case of James Clerk
:15:14. > :15:15.
:15:15. > :15:22.Maxwell. The ranks among the three greatest physicist of all time.
:15:22. > :15:30.Einstein famously said that he did not stand on Newton's shoulders but
:15:30. > :15:34.Clark Maxwell's shoulders. shifted the focus from Newton's
:15:34. > :15:43.classical universe to the theories of relativity. Almost in passing,
:15:43. > :15:52.he created the first colour Here is Maxwell -- here is how he
:15:52. > :16:02.set out to do it. He tickets Ruth three coloured filters. Each was
:16:02. > :16:04.
:16:04. > :16:10.black-and-white but each was different. He predicted each image
:16:10. > :16:17.through the... This week at the Edinburgh Science Festival, he will
:16:17. > :16:23.be creating -- they will be created and the photograph again. We now
:16:23. > :16:26.see the parts of the ribbon generated in red light. If we do
:16:26. > :16:33.the same thing of the green image, we now see the combination of red
:16:33. > :16:39.and green, which you can see some yellow in there. In other places,
:16:39. > :16:45.we still see red or green. Finally, if we now remove the blue filter
:16:45. > :16:51.shade, we see the ribbon as it was, roughly speaking, how I was
:16:51. > :17:01.protected by Max role and Sutton. You can see red, green and blue
:17:01. > :17:05.
:17:05. > :17:10.there. That is how all, as Maxwell It was to deliver -- illustrate,
:17:10. > :17:17.technology, something that had not been worked with before. This was
:17:17. > :17:22.Maxwell showing how people saw the world. 151 years later, it is more
:17:22. > :17:27.relevant than ever. What is the relevance to the 21st century? The
:17:27. > :17:32.picture you are looking at now is broken down into the three colours,
:17:32. > :17:40.red, green and blue, which is what Maxwell first used. That is at the
:17:40. > :17:44.beginning. Maxwell's genius was expressed in four elegant equations.
:17:44. > :17:51.It showed that directors T, light and make his is an were essentially
:17:51. > :17:56.the same stuff. The speed of light was a cosmic speed limit. From that
:17:56. > :18:01.came the modern world. His work underpins all of modern
:18:01. > :18:06.communications, electronics and technology. Every display the you
:18:06. > :18:12.look at every single day, every tablet, smart phone and PC. Yet,
:18:12. > :18:17.what most people have heard of Max -- Newton and Einstein, Maxwell
:18:17. > :18:25.does not have the same level of recognition. When Einstein came to
:18:25. > :18:33.Glasgow, they wanted to link him in the addressed to Lord Kelvin, and
:18:33. > :18:40.he said, no thank you. I want to relate to Clerk Maxwell, because of
:18:40. > :18:43.the special theory of relativity. He also did a lot of work in
:18:43. > :18:51.statistical mechanics, and that brought probability and uncertainty
:18:51. > :19:01.into the world, the certain world of Newtonian dynamics. Maxwell was
:19:01. > :19:10.
:19:10. > :19:18.really the father, the progenitor In preparing to recreate the first
:19:18. > :19:22.public showing of a colour photo, Peter Reid has uncovered to facts.
:19:22. > :19:32.It was not made of tartan, and it was taken upside-down. But
:19:32. > :19:33.
:19:33. > :19:38.Let's have a look at the front Let's have a look at the front
:19:38. > :19:46.pages. �4 billion back whole leaves a gaping pensions deficit. Ian
:19:46. > :19:56.Botham campaigns to raise funds for leukaemia with Neil Lennon. Daily
:19:56. > :20:02.
:20:02. > :20:12.Mail, fury as NHS is forced to go pulled from bus campaign after
:20:12. > :20:17.
:20:17. > :20:27.A chilly weekend coming up, but there will be some son tried to
:20:27. > :20:27.
:20:27. > :20:33.compensate. It will be mostly across the southern half of the UK.
:20:33. > :20:40.There will be some heavy and thundery showers coming. I would
:20:40. > :20:47.not rule out a thunderstorm. 13 or 14 been the best of the sunshine.
:20:47. > :20:51.More showers and today -- than today. We have had a lot of
:20:51. > :20:55.sunshine, but that may not be the case in the afternoon. A light
:20:55. > :21:00.breeze across the southern half of the UK, with a strong breeze
:21:00. > :21:04.further north, and a chilly one too. Temperatures could be back down to
:21:04. > :21:10.8-ten degrees. In Scotland, it could be cold enough for the
:21:10. > :21:14.showers to fall as snow. It gets ever Calder through the weekend.
:21:14. > :21:22.Temperatures struggling to get out of single figures. Showers across
:21:22. > :21:27.the North will fall as wintry rain. Possibly snow. Some sunshine across
:21:27. > :21:32.many areas on Saturday. It will not help the temperatures. Cold with a