:00:18. > :00:24.shouldn't exaggerate it, the same Good evening. If the euro zone
:00:24. > :00:29.breaks up here, it could be as bad as the Great Depression in the
:00:29. > :00:35.1930s. Our eurozone governments about to do enough to head it off.
:00:35. > :00:39.Gravity - that does it really get you down?
:00:39. > :00:41.Good evening. Well it's not all gloom and doom in the eurozone
:00:41. > :00:45.tonight. Greece has a new government. The amount the Spanish
:00:45. > :00:48.and Italian governments have to pay to borrow fell a bit today as a
:00:48. > :00:52.result of the G20 summit in Mexico. And there's talk the bail-out fund
:00:52. > :00:54.set up by the eurozone may be allowed directly to buy the debt of
:00:54. > :00:57.distressed countries. So we'd better hope it all works. Because
:00:57. > :01:06.as we report the effect of failure could be catastrophic. But first we
:01:06. > :01:12.have a bit of cheerful news - unemployment is down again.
:01:12. > :01:19.For many of us these remain tough, economic times a but there is one
:01:20. > :01:25.trend emerging in Scotland just starting to offer a degree of hope.
:01:25. > :01:31.While there are now 220,000 people currently out of work in Scotland,
:01:31. > :01:34.the number of unemployed is down by 14,000. It means we have eight
:01:34. > :01:42.point 2% of the working population unemployed - the same rate as the
:01:42. > :01:47.UK. Abs Prime Minister's Questions, taken by the Foreign Secretary
:01:47. > :01:50.while David Cameron is a way and G20 duties in Mexico, Angus
:01:50. > :01:53.Robertson wondered if the UK Government would give some of the
:01:53. > :01:59.credit to the Scottish Government? For the third month unemployment
:01:59. > :02:03.has reduced in Scotland and for the second in a row, Scotland is the
:02:03. > :02:08.best performer for foreign investment in the UK. Would he take
:02:08. > :02:10.the opportunity to congratulate the Scottish Government and Scottish
:02:11. > :02:16.Development International - if the lead agency which secures direct
:02:16. > :02:21.foreign investment? William Hague said Scotland was benefiting from
:02:21. > :02:25.the current constitutional arrangements. Scotland, as part of
:02:25. > :02:29.the United Kingdom is an attractive place to invest. I congratulate
:02:29. > :02:34.many Scottish people and businesses on their work. They would have much
:02:34. > :02:39.harder work to do if Scotland were not part of the UK. Figures today
:02:39. > :02:43.are positive, but there is an overlap between these figures and
:02:43. > :02:49.the two previous publications. The figures as a whole are consistent
:02:49. > :02:58.with a pessimistic outlook about the way to look forward. And
:02:58. > :03:02.unemployment will continue to grow through 2012. The governments had
:03:02. > :03:07.been giving us support in terms of prioritising infrastructure and
:03:07. > :03:13.investment. It has had a positive effect on the Scottish economy. We
:03:13. > :03:16.would like to see more from the UK Government's and we would like to
:03:16. > :03:20.see that develop more the infrastructure plan in Scotland,
:03:20. > :03:25.which would be beneficial to business. There is still the sense
:03:25. > :03:29.of bumping along the bottom. The fact we will be drawn out of
:03:29. > :03:34.recession and stimulating demand are very weak. A lot of companies
:03:34. > :03:38.are learning to live with that. One of the consequences is, they are
:03:38. > :03:43.not investing, they are not borrowing to expand. At Scottish
:03:43. > :03:47.Questions, both Labour and the Scottish Secretary focused on what
:03:47. > :03:54.they consider the economic uncertainty caused by the SNP's
:03:54. > :03:57.plans for a referendum. Can I ask the Secretary of State and the UK
:03:57. > :04:01.Government they can work with others to ensure we have credible
:04:02. > :04:05.evidence, argument that passes the test of objective and independent
:04:05. > :04:11.scrutiny to ensure her Scottish people get the arguments they
:04:11. > :04:16.deserve? I absolutely agree with her, it is important this great
:04:16. > :04:20.debate has informed by detailed evidence and strong analysis. That
:04:20. > :04:24.is why we are getting civil servants to work through the key
:04:25. > :04:28.issues to engage with academics, think tanks and other respected
:04:28. > :04:34.experts outside Government, to ensure we have all the evidence for
:04:34. > :04:40.the debate. I'm confident as we do that over 18 months, we will show
:04:40. > :04:45.Scott and's plays is much stronger as part of the UK. Strathclyde
:04:45. > :04:51.University's Institute has been crunching the numbers. Their
:04:51. > :04:55.modelling suggests the coalition's austerity programme has cost more
:04:55. > :05:00.Scottish jobs than the great recession. It also sent a complete
:05:00. > :05:07.Euro meltdown will cost 144,000 jobs north of the border. But the
:05:07. > :05:12.Greek exit from the single currency, around 49,000. It is interesting
:05:12. > :05:18.for Government's austerity programme is more affecting the
:05:18. > :05:22.Scottish economy. The Greek exit could turn into a eurozone crashed
:05:22. > :05:27.and again you were looking at a similar impact on the Scottish
:05:27. > :05:31.economy to the great recession as a whole. The Scottish Chambers of
:05:31. > :05:35.Commerce wants an injection of confidence from both the UK and
:05:35. > :05:38.Scottish Government. The UK Government needs to rebalance
:05:39. > :05:43.likely in terms of its outlook. The deficit reduction measures have
:05:43. > :05:47.been necessary, but that has given us additional leeway in order to
:05:47. > :05:51.create a more investment in the economy. That is one of the reasons
:05:52. > :05:56.we would like to see additional capital investment stem from the UK
:05:56. > :05:59.Government and there after, the Scottish Government. We have been
:05:59. > :06:04.speaking to a number of companies who have started to realise what
:06:04. > :06:07.they should be doing. We will see that across the economy, eurozone
:06:07. > :06:13.contingency planning is moving up the boardroom agenda, but is
:06:13. > :06:17.probably not high enough. So, some encouraging news on unemployment in
:06:17. > :06:20.Scotland, but the euro crisis could derail everything.
:06:20. > :06:27.I'm joined now by Professor Brian Ashcroft from the Fraser of
:06:27. > :06:32.Allander Institute. Let's get on to apocalypse in the
:06:32. > :06:38.moment, but falling unemployment when you take into account part-
:06:38. > :06:42.time jobs, could be an optical illusion? I think so. There was at
:06:42. > :06:47.the beginning of this year, a beginning of an uplift in
:06:47. > :06:51.employment and that has been picked up in unemployment. The race of
:06:51. > :06:55.that improvement is deteriorating and the economy were weakened
:06:55. > :07:00.considerably from the survey evidence in April and May. -- the
:07:00. > :07:06.rate. What we cannot get from these figures is the real composition of
:07:06. > :07:10.labour demand. What is the demand for labour services? There is a
:07:10. > :07:14.shift to part-time employment, temporary employment away from
:07:14. > :07:19.full-time employment. We don't do what is the strength of the labour
:07:19. > :07:24.demand. For the fall in full-time employment or not be made up for in
:07:24. > :07:30.the rise in part-time employment? Jobs figures are moving out of line
:07:30. > :07:35.with the output figures, the UK economy in recession and there is a
:07:35. > :07:39.probability Scotland will show a negative number. We are predicting,
:07:39. > :07:42.we have revised downwards are forecast for unemployment because
:07:43. > :07:48.of the shift towards part-time employment. It breaks the
:07:48. > :07:53.relationship between employment and unemployment and output. But we
:07:53. > :07:59.believe it will rise to about 46,000 by the end of the year and
:07:59. > :08:03.50,000 by the end of next year. The fundamental point is, I'm not
:08:03. > :08:07.convinced that demand for labour in the round is actually rising or
:08:07. > :08:12.much out of line of what is happening to output, which as we
:08:12. > :08:16.can see from surveys and the data is still pretty weak. Eurozone? You
:08:16. > :08:20.would be the first to admit you have done a bit of modelling and we
:08:20. > :08:27.shouldn't take for figures too literally. But what you are saying
:08:27. > :08:32.if there was a break up in the eurozone, it matters right here. In
:08:32. > :08:42.Scotland, there would be if not catastrophic, fairly catastrophic
:08:42. > :08:45.
:08:45. > :08:50.This is work done by our Dutch bank, which did as significant exercise
:08:50. > :08:54.at the end of last year are looking at the impact of a Greek except as
:08:54. > :09:02.a one possibility and at the other extreme the breakdown of the year-
:09:02. > :09:07.old. Dat -- breakdown of the euro. They came to a conclusion that
:09:08. > :09:13.there was a breakdown of losses across the board. They fed that
:09:13. > :09:16.data into their model in terms of their markets, at the markets that
:09:16. > :09:22.the Scottish economy sells two, so that Kubrick to a through this is
:09:22. > :09:26.through our model to export and then affecting house will demand an
:09:26. > :09:30.savings rate and investment. The problem that we have had is that we
:09:30. > :09:36.cannot actually get a handle on other transmission Ritz very well.
:09:36. > :09:41.One is the banking system. We know that it will crunched down...
:09:41. > :09:46.the bottom line is that what you're saying could happen will be
:09:46. > :09:51.something very considerably worse than what happened in 2008. Yes.
:09:51. > :09:55.Certainly in terms of jobs. It probably could be worse than that
:09:55. > :10:01.for the reasons we have just said. We have not got a good handle on
:10:01. > :10:05.foreign current investment. We have not got a good handle on, or will
:10:05. > :10:08.there be bank failures. A you're assuming that nothing else changes.
:10:08. > :10:13.You are assuming that Britain and the eurozone countries do not all
:10:13. > :10:17.get together and say that we have to stop this -- stop us now and
:10:17. > :10:22.change policy. There is nothing in our estimate that assumes that
:10:22. > :10:27.there will be a radical Bristol -- fiscal stimulus by the UK
:10:27. > :10:31.authorities. What is important here when you look at the way it works
:10:31. > :10:35.out, the United States is very important in this for Scotland
:10:35. > :10:38.because that is badly affected by the output loss and then that
:10:38. > :10:47.knocks on to us in terms of being an important export market for
:10:47. > :10:50.Scotland. This is a raffia period, if the American President seat --
:10:50. > :10:55.seeks to stimulate the US economy in the face of this, then that will
:10:55. > :11:02.benefit us because that will mean our markets can stay open. So yes
:11:02. > :11:07.there's a lot of policy option. have done this modelling and the
:11:07. > :11:11.Dutch bank have done the basic statistics work. Last time I looked
:11:11. > :11:14.the Bank of England is saying that it is not a model in the snack --
:11:14. > :11:22.was an array is that you have done because it says it is impossible to
:11:22. > :11:28.do. This is slightly worrying. The massed behind the scenes be doing
:11:28. > :11:31.this. I think so. This is not a forecast, this is of what if
:11:31. > :11:36.simulation. They must be doing something because otherwise it you
:11:36. > :11:40.cannot model at... I think they must be. I believe that the bank
:11:40. > :11:45.has contingency plans to introduce conventional Monetary Policies,
:11:45. > :11:49.perhaps even funding a fiscal deficit by new money. All sorts of
:11:49. > :11:54.approaches. Which will significantly help, I would hope.
:11:54. > :11:59.But we do not know. And of course the problem is that it is not a
:11:59. > :12:02.reassuring giving that we are experiencing fiscal austerity in
:12:03. > :12:06.the United Kingdom and that is why we're saying that this is
:12:06. > :12:11.substantial and catastrophic because we have already experienced
:12:11. > :12:16.and output loss of well over five % in the great recession. Thank you
:12:16. > :12:20.very much. Einstein may be about to be proved
:12:20. > :12:24.right yet again. It was you predicted the existence of
:12:24. > :12:29.gravitational waves, ripples in the fabric of space that time. That was
:12:29. > :12:32.almost a century ago and now scientists are confident they will
:12:32. > :12:38.be discovered sin. They're part of an international collaboration that
:12:38. > :12:48.is constructing gravity wave detectors. The ultimate aim is to
:12:48. > :12:49.
:12:49. > :12:55.be able to see across the universe. Far across our universe, a far from
:12:56. > :13:00.our sight, stars and black holes are colliding. The result, a
:13:00. > :13:06.disturbance in the force. The disturbance -- the force is gravity
:13:06. > :13:10.but the disturbance is too small for Schumann's to detect. Until now.
:13:10. > :13:14.If I pick up the pen, at the pen will be attracted to the Earth by
:13:14. > :13:18.gravity. Those two objects know about one another through their
:13:18. > :13:22.gravitational attraction. If a star on the other side of the universe
:13:22. > :13:26.moves, we should also know that. We should feel a change in gravity.
:13:27. > :13:31.The change that we feel has propagated to us all the way across
:13:31. > :13:35.the universe in the form of a fluctuation of gravity in a
:13:35. > :13:39.gravitational wave. This was Glasgow University's first attempt
:13:39. > :13:45.to detect those ripples. For the man who built it 40 years ago is
:13:45. > :13:49.still part of the search, and he thinks we are closer than ever.
:13:49. > :13:54.There are two detectors being up graded just now in the USA. There
:13:54. > :13:59.is a third detector in the USA which may go to India, which would
:14:00. > :14:04.also associate -- which we are also associated with. There is a
:14:04. > :14:08.detector in Italy currently being upgrade it. There is a smaller
:14:08. > :14:16.detector in Germany. That is really hours along with our German
:14:17. > :14:21.colleagues. There is a new detector being built in Japan. So there is
:14:21. > :14:26.going to be a good network of detectors around the world.
:14:26. > :14:30.principle in Europe, the US and beyond is the same. Split are
:14:30. > :14:34.raised a beam and bounce the top two mirrors hundreds of miles away.
:14:34. > :14:38.As the gravitational wave passes, space and time will work and the
:14:38. > :14:43.length of the two arms will change. That disturbance will be detected
:14:43. > :14:48.when the beans are combined. In Glasgow, they have concentrated on
:14:48. > :14:51.making extraordinary manners. He each can be up to 40 kilos but be
:14:51. > :14:57.suspended in just four or thin threads of glass. They have to be
:14:57. > :15:01.very strong and extremely pure. That is to -- that is because to
:15:01. > :15:07.detect these small movements the mirrors must be isolated from the
:15:07. > :15:11.vibrations of their own atoms. you have got a wine glass and if
:15:11. > :15:15.you pay in the wine glass and give it some motion, if it is a very
:15:15. > :15:20.pure wine glass it will bring at one specific frequency and she will
:15:20. > :15:24.hear a pure note. We would like a pendulum has to have one specific
:15:24. > :15:29.frequency at which they move, there we can put that frequency, we can
:15:29. > :15:32.design a system, so as the frequency that the pendulum is
:15:32. > :15:40.moving at a somewhat away from where we would like to detect
:15:40. > :15:46.gravitational movement. Allays arms of the Scottish and German detector
:15:46. > :15:50.are 600 metres long. The two in the US are six times as long. With the
:15:50. > :15:54.sensitivity of all of the detectors being upgraded, there is a
:15:54. > :15:58.conviction that the day of discovery is close. We are now very
:15:59. > :16:02.confident. From statistics of other events that have been happening in
:16:02. > :16:12.the universe, or we realise and believe that there are certain
:16:12. > :16:16.times of Stella interactions. In particular niche and Stein binary...
:16:16. > :16:21.A particular kind that is becoming closer and coalescing and we
:16:21. > :16:25.believe that there are many of these events taking place every
:16:25. > :16:32.year and producing gravitational waves at a level that we should be
:16:32. > :16:35.able to detect. A I think we are very close. I think that the
:16:35. > :16:40.instruments will actually it -- I think that the instruments we will
:16:40. > :16:44.start commissioning next year, but they are due in 2015 to actually
:16:44. > :16:48.start taking their first data. They will not be at full sensitivity but
:16:48. > :16:52.it might be a better sensitivity than we have now, and then it
:16:52. > :17:00.starts to be very interesting as to the question as when will make the
:17:00. > :17:04.first detection. Confirmation could come as early as 2016,
:17:04. > :17:07.appropriately enough exactly 100 years since Albert Einstein
:17:07. > :17:13.proposed the existence of gravitational waves in his General
:17:13. > :17:18.Theory of relativity. And 21st century science already has plans
:17:18. > :17:22.to use them to look beyond the light of the stars. We can use
:17:23. > :17:27.gravitational waves to see small black calls orbiting around a big
:17:27. > :17:33.black holes, see how they are moving, how they are affecting the
:17:33. > :17:38.space and time that this is in. Things that we can think we can
:17:38. > :17:41.really like to understand, Giza behaviour of objects and extreme
:17:41. > :17:46.gravity, those are the sorts of things we would really be it --
:17:46. > :17:51.like to be able to study. The last 40 years has seen many spin-offs
:17:51. > :17:55.from the research, but for the man who has made it his life's work,
:17:55. > :18:00.the next fe years are likely to be particularly satisfying. A very
:18:00. > :18:05.excited. I certainly will continue researching and to we make a
:18:05. > :18:08.discovery. I am past retirement age really, but a really want to keep
:18:08. > :18:17.working until we observe gravitational waves. Then I would
:18:17. > :18:23.be really happy. Beyond that, there are plans for a gravitational wave
:18:23. > :18:28.observatory in space. Its laser arms a million kilometres long.
:18:28. > :18:32.Science has explained the mystery of matters and energy, gravity has
:18:32. > :18:37.remained an enigma. We may be about to acquire the ability to hugely
:18:37. > :18:45.expand our knowledge and begin to understand the force that spans the
:18:46. > :18:51.universe. We are all clear on that!
:18:51. > :18:55.Tomorrow's front pages. The Scotsman. Greek exit would cost