26/07/2011 Newsnight

There are all sorts of scapegoats, the Japanese tsunami, the Royal

Wedding, but the plain fact is, that the British economy is in

trouble. The latest figures out today show it is growing at 0.2%,

not recession, but not recovery either. Just a nether world of

stagnant growth, gathering inflation, and Government austerity.

Can we escape from the zombie economy?

Services are up, manufacturing is down, the economic rebalancing we

were promised doesn't seem to be going quite according to plan.

As the economy flatline, are we months from sustained recovery,

years or even a decade? All three main political parties

are here with their prescriptions. Last week we revealed accusations

of celebrity phone hacking at the Sunday Mirror, now Mirror Group are

launching a review of their journalistic standards, but still

denying everything. A year tomorrow, the Olympics begin,

the author, Ian Sinclair, asks if the huge costs can be justified.

Many of the great things promised as a result of the Olympic legacy,

are here already. Or were here and have disappeared.

Paralympic gold medallists, Will Self are here, as is the Olympics

board member, Tessa Jowell, with Baroness Gray-Thompson.

Dismal is perhaps the best word to describe the state of the British

recovery from recession, if you can really call growth of 0.2% recovery

at all. The word the Government prefers is "stability" which is

another thing all together. The opposition claimed again it was

proof of the need for plan B. No chance, said Number Ten.

0.2% is a bit of an unimpressive number, it tests the creativity of

the politician to turn it into evidence of soaring success. I am

afraid the conclusion is that George Osborne's policies have

choked off the recovery in the previous nine months. It was 2.1%

growth, now in the last nine months just 0.2% growth. This is a

flatlining economy. Growth would have been a bit higher,

except, you know how the Royal Wedding was going to be really good

for the economy and everything, well it turns out it wasn't. Along

with the Japanese tsunami and the warm weather in April, the Office

for National Statistics have said they have had to revise their

guests on growth by making some other guesses. The effects of these

different special factors do go in different direction, and are

subject to a high degree of uncertainty, but our overall broad

brush and illustrative anal sis suggest that they together have sub

- anal sis suggest that they have subjected from GDP

There are more voices telling the Prime Minister to do something

different, at the moment if we believe the rumour, one of those

voices belongs to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who wants, we are

told, an early reduction in the top rate of income tax. Both sides are

denying there is any sort of disagreement between them. Today,

it was almost as if the Prime Minister and the Chancellor were

reading from the same script. I think we should be positive,

because the economy is growing. There is positive news today, which

is the economy is growing. More people are in work than a year ago.

We are creating jobs. Clearly we are, if you like, some stability in

a very uncertain world. crucially, at a time when many

other countries in the world face a lot of instability, we are

providing stability in Britain, and we are a safe haven in the storm.

Why has growth been a bit, well, mouse had-like. The graph has been

falling for the past year, only just staying above the line in

positive territory. How do you boost it? Some believe the

Government has to retarget cuts in spending. You don't want to be

hitting the people most likely to be spending all the money they have,

and you don't want to be pushing people out of work, for instance,

by removing child cautious which means often the second earner it

might not be worthwhile them working any more. Some cuts you

should be avoiding, if you want to find the money you need to look

elsewhere. Where elsewhere? At the top end of the earnings

distribution, if we have to find money, rather than hitting people

who rely on childcare to work, take the money from top earners, and we

spend a huge amount of money as a country still, we should look there

first, rather than the lower to the middle ends of the income

distribution. Is getting households to spend more really the answer to

growth? We don't want them spending more, it is just a mistake to think

there is some solution out there, some magic bullet where the

Government runs even more debt and the private sector runs more debt.

We need to get out of the debt as a country, that will be a long, slow

and painful process. It is not likely, I think, to be a prd of

quiet, some people suggest that - period of quiet, some people

suggest that it might be like Japan in the 1990s where it was slow. I

suggest it will be a bumpy ride, with some periods where we have

recessions and others with rapid growth and quickly.

The Prime Minister was in Caerphilly, at a company that helps

the jobless back to work. When we talk about growth figure, we are

talking about the UK-wide average, there is a lot of regional

variation within this. In this part of Wales, the average person

contribute as fifth of the GDP that the average Londoner does. Although

the economy has created jobs in the past year, 416,000 of them, 34

4,000, or 80% went to people born over seas. There are people who

come to me in my surgeries and constituency, and tell me they are

better off staying on benefits rather than going to work. If that

is the situation up and down the country, it is no wonder it is hard

to get people into work, and make sure that culture of work expands.

So changinging the welfare system is actually vital to the long-term

growth of our economy. The problem, in case you hadn't noticed, is that

money is a bit scarce. All the the options for growth seem to come

with hefty price tags, making a supersonic recovery a bit tricky.

Why are these growth figures so rubbish? I think it is safe to say

it is not because of the cuts. Although cuts in services and some

job cuts started in March, April, they are not big enough to cause

this level of flatlining. I think it is clear that it is because of

this falling spending power. Which is what contributes to that,

inflation, static wage, higher deductions from wage, it amounts to

a cut in real wage a cut in spending power. When you add to

that, people are worried when they hear all these stories, they are

starting to pay down debt, pay down their credit cards, pay their

mortgages off if they can. That is the problem. Now, is it a disaster,

is, are three quarters of poor growth a disaster, after the crisis

we went through, probably not. What they are, what we can begin the

discussion among the politicians from, is they represent the

Government missing its own target. It missed its own prediction. Let's

look at the graph. It has set up this Office for Budget

Responsibility, which is supposed to predict what happens to growth.

Here are the first four prediction, the first three of which were

pretty straight line upward growth. pretty straight line upward growth.

Based from early 20106789 It had a go in March 2011 in

bringing it down, here is reality, the actual growth is lower. We are

1.5 percentage points less in the space of a yor than what the

Government predicted. This has - - a year than what the Government

predicted. This is has an affect on how people live but on what they

predicted. Does that mean if they are 1.5

percentage points fewer they need a plan B? Plan B has been knocked

about a bit, we heard it when the IMF came and put a rubber stamp on

it. It is more quantitative easing if you need it, printing more money,

tax cuts, if you need it, you could always Miss Your deficit reduction

targets, the IMF won't slap their wrist too much with that. These

things Ron the horizon when Liberal Democrat and Conservative

politicians start to talk about it. Waib waib waib at the weekend start

- Stephen McCabe at the weekend started talking about more quees

quees quees, and we had bore - quantitative easing, we had Boris

Johnson talking about cuts in National Insurance. Will it work,

quantitative easing, as we have already got it, isn't exactly

pushing money out into the economy. You would have to ask, tax cuts for

what? To give a short-term boost to next year, or tax cuts, as we heard,

some of the Conservative politicians in David's piece, talk

about, to restructure the economy. If you start talking about tax cuts,

you suddenly have to explain to people what they are supposed to be

doing. Thank you very much. Now we had hoped to interview a

Treasury minister, but we were told no-one was available. But Michael

Fallon Deputy Chairman of the Conservative Party is here, for his

weekly visit, and Chuka Umunna and Lord Oakeshott from the Liberal

Democrats is also here. The various excuses being canvased

today, put out by the office of national statistic, there was a

Royal Wedding, a tsunami, a bit of nice wedding, do you buy any of

this? They said if you add all of them up growth would have been 0.7%

rather than 0.2%, that is quite a big difference. You buy that

explanation? They are an independent office of national

statistics. I asked whether you believe them? I do believe them.

They are independent. Do you believe them? Well they said it was

broad brush and highly illustrative. I think you can have one quarter's

excuses is fine, but when you have three in a row, why don't the

tsunami and bad weather affect the Germans, when their economy is

booming away. One wonders what will happen in the autumn? It is very

worrying, I think these figures are a devastating indictment of George

a devastating indictment of George Osborne's action, I tell you why.

One of the things Paul mentioned was confidence, he used the most

irresponsible language before the election to describe the state of

the economy, decribing it as on the brink of bankruptcy. It was?

serious economist denied that was the case. And of course, afterwards,

when people heard what he was planning to do with his two far,

too fast cuts, confidence fell. there something about our economy

that makes it so much more difficult for it to grow at the

rate some other economies can grow? Yes there is something about it,

the reason, you weren't there, the reason is that Gordon Brown left it

in such a very bad state with such a desperately flawed banking system.

I mean it is much harder for us than it is say for Germany, but the

fact is, the economy is only progressing at the pace of a lame

snail, it is very disappointing, and we need to look at ways to try

to get it going. Just hang on a moment, the economy is growing, it

may be growing more slowly than you would like, but it is growing. That

growth has added half a million new jobs in the last year, it is

expanding every week, there are new jobs being created every week. Of

course everybody would like it to be faster, we inherited, not only

the worst deficit, but a very unbalanced economy. It is growing

at a lower rate than you yourselves predicted? The office of budget

responsibility is independent, it is a lower rate they predicted.

Inflation is higher, there is a rise of commodity prices around the

world that effects us as well. raising VAT help matters? That is

part of sorting out the deficit. Did it help the rate of growth?

There is a big difference between us and the turmoil in the eurozone,

we had to deal with the definite, we announced a plan, we are stick

to go that plan. That is why the market rates for which we borrow

money is down there with the German rates, we are not in the mess that

Spain or Italy are in. Michael talks about the eurozone, look at

the strategies in Greece and Portugal, they whacked up VAT and

imposed massive spending cuts, and look at the mess they are in. There

is a lesson there. One of the problems with the strategy of the

Government is it is self-defeating, we already know, the OBR has

mentioned already there will be borrowing of �46 billion more than

originally forecast. Why? Because growth will be slower, because that

is also going to be linked to falling jobs. I am afraid you have

to take some responsibility for your own last Government, we are in

a mess here, because the banks are not lending, and because our

deficit was very deep. Now, we are starting to get, I agree with

Michael, we mustn't take chances and end up with an olive oil credit

rating, but the problem we have got, you are right on this one, if

growth is too slow we will not get the taxes in we need and welfare

payment also go up. We need to take targeted measures. Stephen McCabe

said for the Liberal Democrats over the weekend, there - Vince Cable

said over the weekend we need to pump more money in through

quantitative easing, but the other thing, I believe is important, if

there is money for tax cuts, which George Osborne is talking about, we

don't give it to the people at the stop who don't need it and won't

spend it, we put it into a targeted tax cut, and my suggestion would be

cutting VAT from 20% to 5% on home improvements and repairs, that

would get white van man going. is something argued for by the

Federation of Small Businesses. have been arguing it for years.

by one. Let's continue the tax thing. This isn't just about

balancing the books and sorting out the deficit, we have to help the

economy grow, that means cutting business stackss, we have cut

National Insurance, cut corporation tax for business, we have made it

easier to start up business in the regions. It means deregulation,

simplifying the systems. We have said the higher rates, we have got

to be competitive, at the moment we have said these are temporary rates

that we inherited, and we need to make sure, all the time, they are

competitive. We have a study going on as to the yield they bring in.

Is that really a priority, when life is really, really tough, day-

to-day, for people outside London, it is not a priority to cut the 50p

rate, why is George Osborne talking about it, why not put the tax cuts

where they are working. We are not cutting the tax rate at the top. We

are studying the yield to it. We need to make sure our tax rates in

the country are competitive. That is the answer, we need to make the

whole economy as competitive as we can, that means more deregulation,

backing by-election helping people grow their businesses, so we can

rebalance the system. We have been hearing this for the last year, and

we have got 0.2% growth. inherited an economy with the worst

deficit in the west. We inherited an economy that was fundamentally

unbalanced. If you let me finish. In the previous nine months...It

Was all on financial services and public spending. We need to

encourage the rest of the economy, the real economy, manufacturing,

science, innovation, in the regions. Manufacturing output has dropped in

the figures we have seen, business services and finances has gone up.

This magical rebalancing that apparently George Osborne is

bringing about, we are not seeing happen. What about the point that

Lord Oakeshott mentioned, which is more quantitative easing, more

printing of money by the Bank of England. What about that? I don't

see that at the moment. If inflation is as per the Bank of

England's central projection, I don't see how they can do another

round of quantitative easing, it is incredibly inflationary, the other

option in terms of monetary policy would be reducing interest rates,

they are on the floor already. This is where the ball bounces straight

back to the Government, people are looking for fiscal policy changes.

The question is how bad does it have to get before George Osborne

agrees to change course. Changing course, means, as you said,

reversing the VAT cut, that means spending �12, �13 billion a year

you haven't got. Coming off the. Can you just engage, let him engage

with the question. Can you engage with the question of quantitative

easing, more printing of money, what do you think? It is for the

bank to decide how much money to print, there is no evidence that

printing the money got through to the economy. There are bigger

problems as Matthew identified, about bank lending and so on,

getting money through to the banks. We have the new agreement with the

banks, the Merlin agreement, so they have to lend more, it started

in February, it is starting to come through. In the first quarter �2.2

billion less than the target. big question is when the vicar's

report comes out recommending major reforms on the banks, hopefully

spliting them up, will Labour support it this time because they

totally failed to before, will you support it now. I will interrupt

you all there. The owners of Mirror Newspapers

have begun an investigation into journalistic practices across the

group's titles, last week a Newsnight investigation alleged

that hacking was common place at some papers in the group. The

Government, meanwhile, has released figures of how often the Government

and their ministers met Rupert Murdoch and his staff. There were

16 meetings by the Chancellor of the Exchequer alone since the

election. Our political editor is here with more.

So? You will recall on Friday, Richard Watson did a story for

Newsnight based on a source a former journalist on the Sunday

Mirror who had told him that phone hacking was prevalent in the past

at the Sunday Mirror, against celebrity, including Liz Hurley,

well, today, Trinity Mirror have announced a review of editorial

control and procedures, they have told us it is not an investigation

into phone hacking or any other allegation like that, and it is not

a response to Friday's story on Newsnight. What about the meetings

with the Murdoch organisation on the part of Government? These were

promised by the Prime Minister a few days ago. Disclosure was

promised? Yes. And of the 16 meetings that you mentioned George

Osborne had over the last 15 months, two of those were with Rupert

Murdoch, three of them with James Murdoch. Jeremy Hunt, the Culture

Secretary, met Rupert Murdoch twice, James Murdoch three times, Rebekah

Brooks once. What is interesting, Michael Gove, the Education

Secretary, who has met, held six meetings in the last year or so,

which he has met Rupert Murdoch, including three in the case of, in

the space of just six weeks in May and June of this year. What I think

is interesting about these links is it shows the extent to which senior,

so many senior figures, were compromised, and to a degree were

embarrassed by their links with Murdoch and the empire.

Compromised? Potentially compromised. Michael Gove's case,

he used to work for the Times, and Murdoch, highly regarded by him,

his wife still works for the paper. One of the interesting aspects of

what has don on over the last few weeks, is to the extent of which

David Cameron has been isolate. People like Michael Gove or George

Osborne, who might normally have come to his aid in public, haven't

done so. In other interesting case, William Hague, who the details

today don't suggest he had any particularly interesting meetings

with News International. It is worth noting that he may well have

been the man that introduced Andy Coulson to the Conservatives in the

first place. Although George Osborne is often credited with that,

calls calls calls, - Andy Coulson, way back in 2003, employed William

Hague as a columnist at the News of the World at a salary of over

�200,000 a year. What will you do tomorrow, in an unpredictable world,

we can reasonably be confident that large numbers of us will be

watching the same thing, the opening ceremony of the 2012 London

Olympics will usher in the world's greatest festival of sport. The

thing is on time and under budget, or under the budget that trebled

after the bid went in, and will cost us all the thick end of �9

billion. The massive expense was justified by the last Government

because it would regenerate massive areas of East London. As we report,

there is many a slip. This is how the dream took shape.

Space age arenas for the world to visit. Built on three years, on

wasteland and what were polluted industrial sites. The centre piece,

the 80,000-seat Olympic Stadium. Amazing what a few billion can do.

Already they are laying the running track, for the 100 sms. But then

the most ambitious - 100ms, but then the most ambitious pledges are

still to be kept. London got the Olympic, not only because they

could put on a big show on time, but because of what they promised

to come next. The regeneration of London's poorest areas. This is to

be the launch pad, the future is supposed to start here. Behind the

�9 billion plus of public money, there is, of course, a buzzword,

the buzzword is "legacy". Legacy seems to be mean different

things to different people. A point gleefully seized by the current BBC

satire. The Olympics isn't really about sport at all, this whole

thing starts when the sport ends. Sustainability is closely related

to legacy? They are not the same, sorry. The original London bid

promised legacy would mean the regeneration of an entire community

for the benefit of everyone who lives there.

Most of the Olympics will happen in the East London borough of Newham,

the locals have already faced years of disruption with the building

work, there is no let up. The mayor says it will only be worth it if

they see the benefits? This is an area of poverty, and has been for a

century. We want to change that. You are worried at the moment that

people could end up resenting things. We will have an opening

ceremony dress rehearsal, we want residents at that. We don't get the

opening ceremony, but the dress rehearsal. We will get the feel of

an Olympics being in the park. There is lots of things to do to

get a feel and be part of the Olympics. You believe local

residents should be invited to that? Of course they should. In the

longer term East London needs job. The mayor, Sir Robin Wales, says

construction of the new �1.5 billion shopping centre, privately

funded, has offered far better prospects than the Olympic project.

But the man so far delivering the Olympics on time and under budget

says that is unfair. I could not have built this relying on Robin

turning up with people to provide the labour force to the contractors.

You always want to get the thing built on time and create jobs. We

gave more focus here than in my experience we have ever done to

creating training opportunities for people, we made it a condition of

the contract with the contractors that they had to employ a certain

percentage of trainees with their work force. These youngsters

training in south London, are part of a charitable project run in the

most deprived boroughs, to encower participation in sport. It has no

olympics funding, but its director is unconvinced by promises of the

game's sporting legacy. In the original bid, Lord Coe pledged the

London Games would inspire a new generation of youth to greater

sporting activity. Some believe no- one at the Olympics is delivering

on that promise. I'm not sure who is taking

responsibility, at the moment I'm not sure who it is. There are

various people you could say, Sebastian Coe was obviously the

person in Singapore who made the comment. Since then it is unclear

whose responsibility it is to create the participation and aspect

of the legacy. If you don't know who to ask, then what hope is

there? I think there are many sports where participation is

decreasing overall. We're hoping that the legacy will be obviously

something that will happen after the Olympics. In order to have

success we need to plan now. Michael di Giorgio's GreenHouse

project has been lauded for encouraging sport not just for

those doing it but for everyone. There are many programme where is

people go in and say there are 50,000 people doing this now, and

there weren't before. Yes, but you are not going to make any

difference to their lives by going in for a short-term. They will stop

doing it in a few weeks time? Absolutely. Perhaps the biggest

headache of the games will be transporting millions of visitors,

the satirists of 2012 have already made hey. It is low flying

aeroplane, if you get it right everybody noticed, if you get it

wrong, first everybody notices it and then they die. Stratford, home

of the Olympic Park, is a growing transport hub, with 14 rail lines

in and out. But the sheer volume of passengers for the games will be a

challenge, and the roads, already notorious for snarl ups, are a real

concern. At the Railway tap vern, just opposite the Olympic Village,

- tavern, just opposite the Olympic Village business is booming. The

landlady is worried, next year the road outside will be closed for 18

hours a day for three months, the beer lorries won't get through.

have already had the road shut for 18 months when we were dismandling

a new bridge. How did you cope? managed, we were part of a building

site. I know we were going to have disruption, because we are so close

to the proximity of the actual site. I understand that. And people do

speak to you, they just seem to think it is the Olympics, and

that's it, you have to swallow. But the head of the Olympic legacy

company, the man in charge of the future, says it will pay off. He

knows the real regeneration of niece London will take another 20

years, and private investors with further billions to spend. And

there are no guarantees. If the idea that is being floated around

the country at the moment, for greater realisation, stuff moving

away from London to the region, maybe London won't need to grow any

more? London is always growing, it is projected to grow between seven

to eight million people, it is a global city, it needs to

accommodate the growth. Look at all the buildings in the back drop,

that is testimony to the fact that London is growing, this will be a

new centre for London. Predicting whether 2012 has a

successful legacy is an exercise in speculation. Because legacy is

something which by definition can only be really judged with

hindsight. So we will have to wait until after next year, in fact,

until years after 2012, before we can really see whether the �9

billion plus gamble is paying off. Tessa Jowell MP is here now, she's

a member of the linlic 2012 Board, and former Olympics minister, she

shadows the department. Why has the legacy plan gone wrong? It hasn't.

It had two elements, the first the regeneration of East London. You

have seen the evidence of that. The second was transforming a

generation of young people through sport. Young people, in our country,

are playing more sport than ever before. We had disagreemented with

the coalition Government's decision to dismantle ...They Are playing

more sport than ever before because the Olympics are coming here?

Olympics are certainly an element. Certainly, when I was in Government,

we put substantial amounts of money into sport that every level there

is, because of the Olympics. This is a legacy before the event?

you are going to create legacy you have to plan beforehand. The sports

programme that we created, which saw every child playing, between

three and four hours of sport a week. That took eight years to

realise. The increase in budget, the original bid was �2.4 billion?

We put in what is called an indicative bid. It wasn't very

indicative, the original bid was �2.4 billion, and the final bid

will be the best part of �9 billion. I made clear to parliament if we

won the right to host the games we would have to review the budget,

which we did. The substantial part of the increase was contingency,

security after 7/7, VAT and the decision to be bolder and do more

on regeneration than the original budget suggested S My question is

given the budget was three times what you thought it was going to be

when you put in the bid, have you got three times the legacy? I think

without any shadow of a doubt. do so many people in the area think

that is a question mark? I take that very seriously. We can talk

here in west London about the Olympics in East London, and people,

the people that Robin Wales are talking about. Robin Wales is being

a first-class champion for the people of Newham. He wants them to

have a fair share of the cake. is the population of Newham, about

a quarter of a million. Is it a gesture of good faith they have had

to pay �30,000 to get tickets for 100 events. Is that a gesture of

their involvement? I hope that what that means is that children from

Newham schools, and so forth, will be able to come to the games.

free? I don't know exactly how Newham are planning to distribute

their tickets, Newham will get, as do tower hamlets, as the other six

Olympic boroughs. They have asked for more, they will get them will

they? We are talking about legacy. And a very important part of the

legacy is changing the nature of the economy, in the poorest

boroughs in the country, certainly in London. What we have seen,

40,000 people will work on the Olympic Park, twice the number of

local people, the emphasis on' present tisships, actually creating,

- apprenticeships, actually creating the legacy. This is for �9

billion? You can turn up your nose and sneer at this. I'm not, I'm

asking how you justify this vast amount of money? It will actually

be rather less than �9 billion. The cost of the park will be �7.2

billion. A snip! You have to remember that either this great

tract was going to remain as contaminated wasteland, or become

the largest urban park in Europe for 150 years, with 2,700 homes in

the first stage, state-of-the-art, sporting venues, and the

opportunity for jobs, because what East London needs is jobs and

investment. We will explore a bit more of this in a moment or two,

the vast sums of money being spent on the Olympics were committed

before the nation woke up to how broke we are. Worth it, we are told,

for the legacy, but inheritance is notoriously much more easily

dreamed than realised. That is someone else's problem, as the

author Ian Sinclair knows, we have heard these sorts of promises

before, indeed we have begin legacies before.

If the drama of international competition, man against man on the

track was required, then Hackney Wick, found ways to provide it, as

a modest private investment, the nation didn't have to go into hock

to pull in the punters. It is my contention that many of

the great things promised as a result of the Olympic legacy are

here already. Or were here and have disappeared and been allowed to

wither away for lack of investment. We couldn't afford to keep them,

examples of some of these things, these great ghosts of London can be

found behind me in Victoria Park. This was once the Crowning glory of

East London, the Victoria Park boating lake, temporarily drained,

as part of the grand Olympic make- over. And including an

extraordinary structure that looks like an east German border post. It

is a recreation of a Chinese pagoda, and the original had come out of

Hyde Park at the time of the great exhibition, it decayed as the way

these things do, and it is such a strange notion, that when we are

trying to invent London again, we go back to something that had its

This locked doorway is to what was once the Eton Mission, whereby

benevolent figures from the great English public schools came to

Hackney and provided everything that the Olympic games is now

promising to do. They had playing fields, boating, they had swimming,

they had allotments, and inside this particular building they also

did culture, they were teaching people to paint. Now, unfortunately,

all that is gone, we can't get inside the building and that

building will disappear very soon. Brought through from the pool room

of the now closed Eton Mission, into the grander space of St Mary's

Church, we have what really is the legacy of the first attempt to

bring sports and athletics to the people of East London. All that we

are left with are a series of quiet haunting images of the sporting

teams of the past. A sort of cabinet of curiosities for a great

High above Hackney Wick, if we're looking for the one big cultural

legacy of the Olympics, maybe we should just observe more closely

what is around us, rather than trying to impose something massive

and spectacular, a lot of the best qualities are the very things that

you have to tease out for yourself, by going up in weird elevators into

the tops of mysterious buildings. If I look over there, I see water

playing, remediating over a pile of rubble, and for me that is as good

I feel that the real legacy is the place itself, which is something

you can't predict. So legacy is defined as being the unpredictable,

and should be kept away from all kind of planners and promoters, and

left to the people themselves hidden within these buildings to

fix their own legacy and to write their own history, and anything

else is false, impractical and, in the end, wrong.

Tessa Jowell is still with us, I'm joined by Will Self and Baroness

Gray, who has won 16 gold medals. What is Britain trying to say with

these Olympics? It is part of the same old song of what our society

has been doing during the boom years. This is a creation

essentially of capital, capital has to find things to do with itself.

It is essentially a kind of boosterism, huge monumental

buildings, massive amounts of infrastructure, mood music, you

heard it all from Tessa, state-of- the-art was a phrase we heard there,

it is not about social capital, it is about capital capital. Watch out,

she's looking very angry here? don't agree with you Will? What a

surprise? We have done this before. What I think the Olympics is saying

about us is that we are a proud, modern, open and diverse country,

that celebrates tolerance, and that it is quite different from some of

the is iteryo types of Britain. never understand - Stereotypes of

Britain. I never understand what elite athletes have to do with the

state of Britain. Do you see it like that? It is hugely positive.

The Paralympics will be an amazing legacy, having 4,500 disabled

athletes in London, will change attitudes and legislation more than

anything else will be able to do. Any more than seeing the same thing

on television anywhere else? will be in London and they will be

around. London is an old city, incredibly expensive and difficult

to change. Having the athletes here will do more to normalise

disability than anything we see. Disabled people are still excluded

from society. Paralympic sport is about elite sport, it also has a

secondary message. For me, the legacy of the Olympics what that

can do to change the Paralympics. It is one organising committee

promoting itself as two games, will be incredibly powerful. Is it not

the case that this obsession with elite sport, as in the Olympics, is

damaging some grassroots sport? There is the view that elite sport

doesn't help long-term grassroots participation. However there will

be a Wimbledon effect. In the weeks after the games, lots and lots of

young people will want to do sport, they will want to do art, and lots

of different things. It is how we are then geared up to deal with it.

That is another part of it, will the clubs be ready, will the

governing bodies be ready, will the volunteers and coaches be there to

accept all the young people who will come in. What do you make of

the legacy argument? It is not there at all, really. It is a sort

of boon dog, I don't think it matters whether you talk in terms

of disabled, young people, or you talk in terms, I had dinner with

days abled friend this week who said, I'm afraid to say is a big

critic of the Paralympics and doesn't feel it does that for the

disabled community at all. There are many disabled people who stand

in the same relationship to elite disabled athletes as you or I do to

the elite athletes. There aren't the resource there is, we have had

a decade or two decades, where playing fields have been sold off

by local authorities, and swimming pools. It is beginning to make me

slightly angry. Simon Jenkin, by no means a firebrand on this issue,

said the games would be elitist, and stupifying in his column today,

that is the perception in the games. Sepp Blatter will be riding in

special lanes to this games, with his cronies, and that is where the

�9 billion. That wouldn't be so if we had the sell-out games. It was a

clever piece of marketing. Tickets sold at prices that people could

have afford. Two-thirds of tickets �50 or less, the Robin Hood tax on

the corporates to get kids from schools into the Olympic Stadium,

watching Olympic sport. At every level, at every single level these

Olympics have been, you can't answer every single challenge,

focusing on training young people, creating jobs for young people.

many jobs were created. 40,000 people have worked on it. How many

were local. 25%. I think I could create more than 10,000 jobs, if

you give me �9 billion, I can create a lot more than that. I

could have cleaned up that whole area. 40,000 people working in the

park, 8,000 when Westfield hope, another 8,000 in the press and

broadcast. These are sustainable aspect of it is a shopping centre.

With an academy to train people in the retail industry. It is a

shopping centre and a training academy for people to sell more

things. I'm not seeing that as particularly sustainable. Retail is

an important part of our economy, we had a gloomy discussion at the

beginning. East London will become an engine of growth. But in the

meantime, in the meantime, as a country, as the evidence is, and

the number of people who volunteered to take part, the kids

who want to be part of team GD, the rate of ticket sales, the country

is getting behind this. You're on theing willcy, that is two weeks,

what comes afterwards? Hang on skaebgd, please, as an athlete,

what do you make of it, these concerns are widely held, as an

athlete? The atmosphere during games time is very different, it is

how to harness that for a positive value. The trouble with legacy is

it means different things to different people. Athletes aren't

that bothered about legacy. From my experience is from the five games I

competed at and the one that I worked at, is that we all need to

be responsible for legacy. There is so much of what is happening at the

moment we are are panicking about it. This is my analogy, Sebastian

Coe is a multi-millionaire who has made an awful lot of money out of

sports club and being a global brand ambassador for Nike shoes, he

gets a lot of tax-payers' money, it is like giving a brewer money to

mount an Octoberfest. Sebastian Coe has done a fantastic job as

chairman of the organising committee, let's hope for every

Tany Gray. Not that there will be many. There will only be one.

we will have 16 gold medals and more kids playing sport and feeling

better. Where will they play it about, they will not play it in the

cracked Olympic buildings that will reside back into the marshes where

they came from. Even the centre is not fit for purpose. They are

trying to sell it to a football team who don't really, it is not an

ideal football. It is a multipurpose stadium. This could go

on for a long time. It will go on for a year at least. Thank you all

very much. That is all from Newsnight tonight, friend and

family of the singer Amy Winehouse, sent her off today with a funeral

service in North London, she was 27. Here she is at the height of her

powers. # Black

Tl # Black # Black

# I go to # I go back to

# We only said goodbye with words # I died a hundred times

# You go back to her # And I go

# We only said goodbye with words # I died a hundred times

# You go back her Hello there, the western side of

the UK saw the sunniest weather we had, that is where we will start

with most of the sunshine in the morning. We will keep more cloud

for central and eastern areas of England, sunny spells in Scotland.

Rain will eventually arrive into Northern Ireland and the Western

Isles. For northern England though it should be dry, we will have

sunshine. It may brighten up a touch to the Pennines. The odd

shower feeding to the east of London. Better chance of seeing

some sunshine as you head further best for the south west of England.

It should be a dry day. 23, 24 degrees, it will feel pleasant when

the sun is out. Patchy cloud around here and in Wales in the afternoon.

Still some sunshine as well. For Northern Ireland a bright start in

the east and west. Drizzley rain heading towards Belfast by the end

of the afternoon. By that time seeing rain heading into the

mainland of Scotland, ahead of it sunshine, a warmer day in

Aberdeenshire, and 24 degrees in For Scotland, we see the rain