05/08/2013 Newsnight

New Government promises on childcare costs, don't alter the

fact that British workers and their families are experiencing the

fiercest financial squeeze in decade. This wasn't what the future

of supposed to be like. A mouth- watering look at the illusion

living that will be within everyone's reach in ten years time.

The cost of living is territory that Labour would now like to fight

the next election on. Shouldn't we all be honest and just admit that

expectations for the future are just a fantasy. Do money and power

lead to happiness any way? Or just the opposite? Should you really be

sharing your time with your loved ones rather than working all hours

for material wealth? The Washington power broker, Arianna Huffington

thinks so, and is here to make her case.

Plus the coastline of England is some of the most stunning in the

world, the plan was that you would have the right to walk around all

of it uninterrupted if you wanted to, it hasn't happened. Would you

eat it? The burger grown from the stem cells of a dead cow? Good

evening. The cost of living is now set to be one of the key political

battlegrounds of the next general election. At the moment inflation

is at 2.9%. Yet wages are rising at the last count by just 1%. So

British workers are getting poorer and that's going to last for some

time. It's one of the reasons why today the Government said it would

help working parents with the cost of childcare if it wins the next

election. Labour's happy to push the cost of living theme and will

go on the assault with it tomorrow, particularly after recent figures

showed the economy has finally begun to grow a bit. Our political

editor reports. So to bed after a tiring day

keeping a watchful eye on the robots. If you closed your eyes in

the 60s to think of life in 2013 you would see shiny new kit with

money no object. The hands-free vacuum cleaner hasn't materialised,

but people still think our standard of living with continue its

exsorable rise. Today the Labour Party makes it political, since

coming to power they say David Cameron has allowed living

standards for a family to fall by nearly �7,000. About the value,

they say, of a small car. Labour use ONS figures to show that

Prime Minister Cameron has presided over more months of falling wages

than any previous Prime Minister, 36 out of his 37 months in the post.

Comparing us with other countries Labour use a House of Commons

library calculation to suggest that the UK has seen the biggest fall in

workers' income of any country in the G7 since 2010. But for far too

many wages are falling and prices are risinging. They feel worse off

not better off. Far from feeling they never had it so good, millions

of people in Britain are thinking are we ever going to have it so

good again. There is now a possibility the economy returns to

the same sort of solid growth it saw under the previous Government.

The coalition parties will say this vindicates the fiscal decisions the

Government has taken. The Labour Party will move on to asking, yes

there is a recovery, but what kind of recovery will it be? So there

might be growth, but will there be a growth in wages? There might be

jobs, but what kind of jobs will they be? What does it say?

Last year Newsnight told the story of zero-hours contracts, contracts

with no fixed hours. One year on research is published estimating

one million workers are on these sorts of contracts. The charge is

these people may be in work, but can they actually feed a family on

a zero-hours contract. The Business Secretary, Vince Cable, is to

review their use, keen to match Labour's attack on falling living

standards. There are some calculated risks for the Labour

Party in pushing this cost of living agenda. The increase in

living standards began to falter early in the last Labour Government

as this graph shows. Labour' repost is there are difficult -- Labour's

repost is there are difficult structural issues to grapple with.

These structural issues means some of Ed Miliband's policies will take

as long as this roof to bring down the cost of living. We need to look

to the future, not squabbling about the past five years. That means

putting in place a real plan for growth now and in the next five,

ten, 20, 50 years. That is about a global economy and making the UK

Labour market competitive. About attracting business to the UK,

about reforming welfare, making sure the planning system can build

houses, making sure that we begin with the right shops, right places

and right high streets, that is what we need to see from Labour,

not political points scoring about what has happened in the past.

Recent polling for YouGov suggests people have complicated views on

what Governments can do about the cost of living. Many of all

persuasions agree that living standards can't be sorted out

before economic stability has been achieved. The cost of living isn't

that important when people are determining whether the economy

feels good or bad to them. It is one of the things that goes into

the mix along with growth and unemployment. All these things

affect the all-important feel food factor -- "feel-good factor", which

is what political scientists believe delivers success in the

elections. They are not doing well on the cost of living and they are

seen as out-of-touch. But are the Labour Party doing any better? That

is the crucial bit and the multimillion dollar question.

Really they are not. The Government is ahead on economic credibility in

opinion poll, but it also knows it has to act to ease the cost of

living. Today the Chancellor announced childcare vouchers.

is tax-free childcare which will be a real help to working families. We

want to help all families, later in this parliament we will be

introducing tax breaks for married couples. But this tax-free

childcare will be an enormous help for families on struggling budgets

and will help with the cost of living.

If oddly, that was the Chancellor needing a child to identify green

shoots for him. The price for all politicians is in 2030 whether they

have helped these kids as they come out of university or into their

first job. That little girl could be a fact-checker for a future

Chancellor. We asked the Treasury for someone to talk about the cost

of living but no-one was available. With us is the shadow Treasury

Minister, Chris Leslie, would Labour stop prices rising faster

than wages? A number of things need to be done. Would Labour do that?

It is notable the Government haven't taken the action we need on

price rises. There are two components to the cost of living

issue, one is wages and what is happening on those. Price rises are

particularly bad when it comes to the monopoly utility things people

have to have to get by. The two things I would point to would be

the cost for commuters, for example, in terms of transport getting to

and from work, and we know that the rail companies have been hiking up

prices, astro no mamically, far more than David Cameron -- as no

mamically, far more than David Cameron said. There could be

regulation on that. You would help on rail fairs and energy, would

Labour be able to stop -- rail fares and energy, would Labour be

able to stop prices outstripping wages? That is where you get to the

combined policies you need to have. On energy, for example, you get rid

of Ofgem, the regulator is just not working. We need to make sure if

there are falling wholesale energy prices that those are actually

passed on to customers much when it comes to wages, what we have to do

is make a choice. Do you have an economy that is skewed towards

helping the very wealthiest at the top on the backs of everybody else,

or do you try to make sure that everybody gets a fair share of any

prosperity and growth we can have. We obviously want the latter. That

is an economic choice that you have between the political parties. We

certainly haven't seen that over the last three years. Can you go

into the next election promising that is something that Labour would

guarantee? We want to make sure that we address this cost of living

crisis. The fact that we can't even get a Government minister on to

debate it shows, I think, how ouch out-of-touch the Government are on

this particularish -- how out-of- touch the Government are on thisish

particular issue. -- on this particular issue. You didn't

address it under the last Labour Government? We had a global

financial crisis. Living standards began to stagnate in 2003, way

before the financial crisis? reaction we had was not just

minimum wage and tax credits, but also reducing VAT. What have George

Osborne and David Cameron done? They increase VAT to 20% and so

more than any other Prime Minister since records began out of his 37

months, for 36 of them we have seen prices way, way outstripping wages.

In that one month where apparently there was more income, that is

because there was a bonus bonanza at the end of the 50p rate. When

that 50p rate of cut for millionaires from 50p to 45p all

those bonuses came through. He has the worst record of any Prime

Minister, anybody in Number Ten since records began. Under a Labour

Government are you saying that voters would be worse off, it just

wouldn't be quite so bad as you say it is now? We want voters to be

better off. We need a Government that focuses on a strategy to

actually do something about this now. We heard the Chancellor

talking about childcare, maybe in 2015, what use is that to people

now in 2013, or even 2014, who are finding it really difficult to make

ends meet. It is one of the core differences of philosophy between

the political parties. The Government have a laissez faire,

let the market solve it all approach, we are saying let's get

on with it, roll up our sleeves and do something about it. You don't

need to list what the coalition have done, raising the rate to

�10,000, freezing council tax for three years, abandoning the rises

in fuel duty scheduled in by the last Labour Government, all of

which is helping with living standards? Not only are we seeing

in this year the level of prices outstripping wages, people are

�1350 worse off. That is also, don't forget, there has been tax

rise, VAT and others, as well as some of those cuts in benefit of

�891 for the typical family. By the end of the parliament the

Treasury's own Office for Budget Responsibility are predicting that

the level of loss in people's real wages will cumulatively be �6,660.

That is a lot of cost, the loss that people will have felt, thanks

to David Cameron's ten years in office. And yet voters still trust

David Cameron and George Osborne more than they would your leader

and your Shadow Chancellor to run the economy? I would dispute that.

Why do you think that is? Polls have consistently shown since June

2011, why is that? The public have elected a coalition Government.

They wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt. But I think

as time goes on and they see that actually they are worse off, they

are out of pocket more and more, they are starting to question

George Osborne and David Cameron's credibility on this. For all those

big macro-economic figures, it will come down to this, do people feel

better off having had David Cameron and George Osborne in office? The

figures are suggesting that they will be significantly worse off.

Thank you very much. Having established that many of us

are going to stay feeling poorer for longer, are we also destined to

feel more missable and less successful? It depends how you

measure it. According to the Editor in Chief of the Huffington Post.

The old model where success is long hours, lack of sleep and constantly

checking your e-mails isn't working she believes. We will speak to

Arianna Huffington in a moment, along with the creator of Purple

Ronny, and Professor Winston, who says as we are descended from apes

there is not much we can do about the drivers and ambition. First

this. Too much and too long we seemed to have surrendered personal

excellence and community values in the mere accumulation of material

things. Our Gross National Product now is over $800 billion a year.

Robert Kennedy gave that critque of GDP as an indicator of America's

success in 1968. 42 years later David Cameron said he wanted a

whole new measure, GWB, or "general well being". Just as the GDP

figures actually they don't give a full story of our economy's growth,

but they give us a useful indicator of where we are headed. I believe a

new measure won't give the full story of our nation's well being,

or our happiness or contentment or the rest of it, of course it won't.

It could give us a general picture of whether life is improving.

According to Arianna Huffington it is time to redefine success beyond

money and wealth, because of the state of the country's mental

health. One in four Britons are suffering from anxiety or

depression. Andrew Stead thinks she's on to something. He used to

be a GDP kind of guy. I was very fortunate, I didn't have to worry

about money, I could plan a holiday without really thinking about it.

He was a very wealthy banker at Goldman Sachs, now he runs

happiness workshops teaching people that money doesn't matter nearly as

much as they think it does. Surely only someone who has experienced

the Joyce of first class travel would have the nerve to say that

money isn't that important? I think it is a very fair point. It is

levelled at every single person at every level of society. If you own

a yacht you are a member of the yacht club and surrounded by people

who own yachts. It is a question of understanding what you want and not

wanting to jump on, the jumping in the competition can't continue and

at some point it has to stop. We have to accept the level we have to

be comfortable and accept that, and it is within reasonably modest

means we can open up a huge level of happiness anden gauge in society

in a different way. David Cameron's general well being index never

materialised, but the Government is publishing happiness data.

Apparently we are more cheery than The data shows that Britain comes

10th in the happiness table, out of the EU's 27 states.

Could it have been Danny Boyle, Olympic gold and the Diamond

Jubilee that helped the country's mood? Or was last year's drop in

unemployment much more significant? The statisticians say they don't

know, but the research on the relationship between the economy

and happiness keeps changing. think obviously money matters, the

question is how much off and for what reason. There has been a lot

of back and forth in the research over decades about whether above a

certain level, having more money makes you happier. For a long time

people seem to think that above a very basic threshold more money

didn't make any difference. Now the research has all come back in a

different direction and suggesting no, it is worth having more money

for your happiness, pretty much indefinitely. If money brings

happiness then Sloane Square in Chelsea should be the most chipper

place on earth. We asked well seasoned observers of the well-

heeled. Most of the people I serve up here don't seem very happeny. I

don't know why. Does it surprise that they are not happy? Yeah, if I

had a �3 million house I reckon I would be quite happy. I never find

them that happy. How do they seem? A little bit miserable, to be

perfectly honest. I suppose they work 12-16 hour days to earn that.

What does Andrew Stead recommend? Well think happy thoughts and

remember to think about them by applying stickers on your gadgets.

Well it works for him. Let's speak to three people success

by anyone's standards but are they happy. Arianna Huffington is the

founder of the Huffington Post. Lord Winston is author of Human

Instinct, and also with them is the author of Purple Ronnie, who spent

�35,000 of his own money making a short film to cheer up Britain. We

will ask if that worked in a moment. First of all, what is happiness and

how do you measure it? Well going back to the Greek philosophers,

Socrates, others, they talked about flourishing, they linked it a lot

to a sense of purpose. The founding fathers in the states talked about

the pursuit of happiness in the declaration of independence, it

hasn't just the pursuit of having fun, it was again feeling good by

doing good. Happiness is something which has to go beyond these

measures of success that our culture has endorsed, money and

power, the first two measures of success. That's an old model and

you are saying that's broken, that doesn't work any more? It is broken,

exactly. Who says?The data says it. If you look around here in the UK,

or in the US or anywhere in the world you see the data about

depression, stress, stress-related diseases, whether it is high blood

pressure, diabetes, heart disease, really growing. Here in the UK just

in the last year we have data for in one year anti-depressant

prescriptions have gone up by over 9%. A third of people say they

can't sleep. Sleeping pill prescriptions are sky rocketing.

Stress, anxiety disorders, clearly there is something wrong. That is

why I think, even though the idea behind having a happiness index is

really great, and it would be wonderful to have the conversation

we are having here, a national conversation about what it really

means and how we can be happier, the data of the survey is really

pretty meaningless and it is contradicted by the data I just

quoted. Robert Winston do we have time in our Daily lives to have

national conversations about happiness? There is something

really in what you are saying, what is interesting, I'm not quite sure

how old you are Giles, but I suspect that you Victoria and Giles

are much more likely to be less happy than you and I are, I'm

likely to be the most happy, as you get older it is shown that you get

happier and happier until you completely gaga when you are

totally happy. Apparently people seem to be least happy in their

mid-40s which is when they are striving hardest to keep up. That

rather supports your argument. Giles how old are you, and are you

the least happy of the three people here? I wouldn't want to presume to

assume, I'm 47 and this evening I feel happy. But actually there is

definitely data that I have two daughters who are 20 and 24, they

are the most stressed generation. A lot of it is to do with technology.

The prevalence of technology, the fact that many of us never

disconnect has a very deteriorating effect on it. That is part of the

old model that you have rejected, but you have subscribed to that

model throughout your working life. The long hours and the addiction to

the technology. You ran the Huffington Post, still Editor in

Chief, on-line newspaper, incredibly successful, sold to AOL

for hundreds of millions of dollars, you can reject the model because

you have made it? I'm not rejecting the model. We are saying you need

to include a third metric, it is not to reject the first two and

live in the desert somewhere, but we are going to include if our

lives are to be happier and more fulfiling is to include a third

metric, our well being, tapping into our own wisdom and make better

decisions, a way of looking at the wonder of life, and to give back.

These are the four elements that make a more fulfiling life. Let's

go with the third metric, will we give it the attention above the

other two? That is an interesting question, obviously you have done

that with your work because part of it is retaining some of the

childlike quality of our lives which we tend to lose in middle-age,

but then perhaps regain again when we become grandparents. Do you

agree with that? Funnily enough when I think about happiness and

what constitutes happiness, I always come up with one word which

is playfulness, that is what Robert was talking about. There are all

sort of elements that constitute happiness. For me playfulness is

one of them. I think we need to look at the very natural way in

which children present themselves. We can learn a great deal from them

about how we are designed as human beings, about how we should operate,

about how we should move forwards. There is quite a lot of evidence

that happy children are less likely to be depressed when they are

adults. So there is an advantage in having a good, loving, stable

relationship as a very young person. There is also, interestingly about

the model you are talking about, what some research shows is all you

need to do is earn a thousand dollars a year more than your next

door neighbour and you will be happier. It is only a thousand

dollars, when it guess goes up it doesn't work any more. I don't

think there has to be a trade-off. If you go to work places fuelled by

burnout and sleep depravation and exhaustion, the leaders don't make

good decisions. If you look at the financial meltdown, where were

they? Where were the CEOs who missed what was happening. Maybe if

they had gotten a good eight hours sleep and done their mediation and

yoga. Is it as simple as that?I think at the moment we are led in

politics, business and media by many leaders who are exhausted,

sleep deprived, burnt out and making terrible decisions. I think

if they could take some time to tap into their own wisdom they would

make better decisions. It is probably dealing with uncertainty.

We are living in an increasingly uncertain world, how we deal with

that is really quite important. Religion comes into this, because

certainly evidence those that one way of dealing with uncertainty is

being religious that tends to reduce the amount of unhappiness

that people express, I don't know if it is true. That is widely

stated. Giles, can I ask you, you some years ago you went through

Cannes, you have experienced depression, do you think that means

that you are more able than others to know what happiness is? With

cancer perhaps not so much. I had cancer when I was in my early 20s.

Depression I think without question, I had that five years ago. It is

the most extraordinary sort of violent illness, quite unlike what

people who haven't had it might understand the term "depression" to

constitute. The one remarkable thing about it which I think is an

extraordinary prif lipbl actually is to recover from depression,

which almost everybody does as you know. When you recover you look at

the world with new eyes, you regain your capacity to experience joy, as

if for the first time. I think that is incredibly rewarding. That is

really important, in his essay on experience, Montain thanks fortune

for having given him the pain of bladder stone, because when he is

pain free he understands what is happiness. So in order to

understand happiness you have to be unhappy. It wipes your soul clear,

it is a privilege to experience joy, for me it is simple human things,

it is the connectivity between human beings, love is another way

of expressing it. Almost anything that has been written about

happiness, love is one of the most fundamental tenets, one of the most

fundamental ingredients to the recipe of producing a happy life.

Do you think you might be guilty perhaps of imposing this, let's

have beds in offices, don't be addicteded to the technology. That

might make some people happy, checking their e mails the whole

time, are you guilty of imposing what you think makes people happy

on others? Firstly there is no imposition, this is a choice that

companies make right now in the States 25% of corporations have

introduced some form of mindfulness provision. At the Huffington Post

we have nap spaces and yoga. A lot of companies have found a

correlation of productivity and retention of talent and having

employee focus and a work place that is less fuelled by burnout.

What they said about gratitude and love, that is ultimately the third

metric, if we can bring these into our lives in whatever form that

make sense for each one of us, we have lives that are much more

fulfiling. Thank you very much, thank you for coming on the

programme, thank you. Now if you want to go walking

around the coast of England, perhaps that might make you happy,

the entire coast, you will have to wait a while, the Government has

admitted to us that its target date for a continuous path around the

English coast is likely to slip, because not surprisingly it is not

a spending priority in the current climate. One of the reasons

ministers agreed to the plan in the first place was to encourage more

people to use the coastline. Would a continuous path succeed in doing

that, as ramblers insist, or would scarce public funds be better spent

developing coastal FA tillties that already exist. We begin the journey

in Wales, where there has been a continuous coastal path for over a

year. Unhur yod and uncrowded, this

corner -- unhurried and uncrowded, this corner of South Wales has

always had pilgrims, drawn by dramatic coastlines and glorious

nature, an area steeped in history and poetry. The sunny afternoon

yawns and moons through the dozy town. The sea lolls, laps and idles

in, with fishes sleeping in its lap. This area reeks of Dylan Thomas,

everyone has a tale to tell, they used to babysit his kids, drink

over there. We know for sure that these three he isturies and the

three villages provided a lot of inspiration for some of his work.

While the towns are better known and connected, this village has

always been off the literary tourist trail, maybe this

unassuming piece of tarmac is bringing change to the village. It

is the Wales Coast Path, which for the first time directly links the

three villages and connects them to a longer route right around the

coast of Wales. What is this place? Scotch Bay. It is a mix of

traditional path and new construction, 1400kms in all,

mostly hugging the coast. It opened just over a year ago. Now I'm not

planning on doing the whole thing, but to get a flavour I joined some

local enthusiasts. What is the Wales Coast Path doing? What is the

purpose of it? It is rather nice that it is uniting Wales. All the

orientation for Wales are roads west to east, now we have a path

going right round. But the path was also built to attract not just

locals, but visitors from further afield. And the main attraction

here is where I met Michael on holiday from Manchester, he

appreciates the continuity? It is never a steal way, the coastal path

for us was a big push. We like to see different views and literally

every section of the path has been, the views have been amaze, we have

had to stop and take it all in, it has been breath taking. In purely

economic terms the Wales Coast Path cost �16 million, it is estimated

it added the same amount to the Welsh economy in the first year,

when almost three million people used it. Here they hope it will

help them benefit more from next year's Dylan Thomas centinary.

Already they say a few more visitors are trickling in. We are

not overrun by new visitors but any visitor is welcome to a small

business, you know. They may spend pennies, but they may spend a

couple of pounds, every penny count, it is as simple as that. Wales

claims to be the first country in the world to link up its coastline

like this. Serious walkers think England should hurry up and do the

same. We are afterall an island nation, we have an affinity with

the sea. Actually over 30% of our coastline is closed off to us. We

want to open it up to allow people not just to go to the honey pots

like Brighton Beach but to spread out and enjoy themselves. This is

about not just people able to walk over long distances, but for people

to go with their grandchildren and wiggle their toes in the sand and

go rock pooling and own and explore and love their coast again.

I have left South Wales for the other side of the Bristol Channel.

Here on the coast of Somerset as undiscovered beauty, it is

undiscovered because you can't get to it. This is as far as I can go,

if I want to carry on and reach the next town of cleave done over there,

it is only about three miles along the coast, but all this behind me

is private farmland. Right now I need to go back the way I have just

come, go all the way around, across the M5 twice to get there. It is a

total of seven miles. At this spot there is not even a pros posed --

proposed coastal route, like many places the path just ends.

Hopefully there will be an upgrading of old ones and building

of new ones. There are paths around the 4,500kms of coast. The first

new stretch around Weymouth Bay and Dorset opened last July in time for

the Olympic sailing events. Last month two more stretches in Cumbria

and the north-east got the go ahead for construction work to start.

DEFRA is currently considering one route in north Norfolk, and will

look at five other routes in the coming months. The target by 2019

is to complete 1900kms, 40% of the England Coast Path. This is a spot

in Somerset where there is a proposed route, but it has less

than unanimous support. Julian Browning has farmed this land for

30 years, he says he and other farmers already provide routes for

walkers to enjoy the coast, they are called permissive paths, we're

on one now. We have now got to what I want to show you. It is lovely

isn't it? The England Coast path would run along the cliff top,

Julian said that would cause him economic loss and simply isn't

justified. We get no compensation for being forced to have this path.

There are other walks, many other walks. Miles, 75% of this country

has got a path around the cliff edge. I don't see why they should

want to or have to in these austere times be spending money on putting

one in the other 25% when people have plenty of walks to do. Julian

will get a chance to object later this year, but something else is

more likely to stall the England coast path, budgets. The Government

is obliged by legislation to build it at a total cost of �4.5 million,

it is not a lot for an infrastructure project. Still the

minister responsible admitted to me that with spending cuts looming,

there are higher priorities, and that target date of 2019 looks

unlikely. If it takes a year or two more to do than we originally

planned, it is a noble ambition we will be delivering I think. I want

to concentrate on areas where there is the most economic benefit. Like

a lot of things, you know, I would love to be able to be playing with

a different deck of cards than we inherited three years ago. If that

means you have to take longer then we have to. It won't be much longer.

The minister bonders if a continuous path is even the best --

bonders if a continuous path is even the best way to spend scant

resources? There is a small percentage of people who want to

walk from Deal to Portsmouth, if they want to do that good, we will

have a coastal path in time for them to do that. I'm concerned

about the people who can bring maximum benefit to coastal

communities and businesses. We have to make cuts, everyone is making

cuts, but the Government is also protecting those things that it

thinks will bring growth. It is an infrom structure investment, and we

think that the coast -- it is infrastructure investment, we think

the coastal path is a massive investment for the rural economy.

Our coastal towns are some of the most depressed areas, this is a way

of bringing resources in. It would be cheap. Both the Government and

the ramblers want to get more people to the coast. Where they

disagree is whether a continuous path is the best way to do it. Here

the tribulations of the England coast path seem very far away. One

year since the path opened here we couldn't find anyone who thought it

was bad idea. They appreciate its unifying quality. It fit with the

poetry of this place. In a very odd news conference today, a burger,

originally grown in a lab in the Netherlands, was fried and eaten in

London in front of members of the media. Scientists had originally

taken thousands of cells from a dead cow and turned them into

strips which they combined to make a beef pattie. It cost thousands of

pounds to reproduce, but they believe it could be sustainable way

of meeting the global demand for meat. Or we could eat less meat

some people say. The inventor of this food is Mark Post. This is

just to show we can do it. The technology is there, we can create

a hamburger, cook it, eat it. We can make a good argument that it

eventually will be ethical and more environmentally friendly. But you

no in order to improve it, it will take us probably ten, twenty years

to get it into the supermarket. was expecting the texture to be

soft, there is a bite to it. There is quite some flavour with the

browning. And I know there is no fat in it, so I didn't really know

how juicy it will be. But there is quite intense taste. What was just

said, the absence is I feel like the fat. You know it is a leanness

to it. But the bite feels like a conventional hamburger. Let's talk

about the petrie dish pattie with Ken Cook an environmentalist and

critic of traditional ago culture, and we have a financial times and

food author. Would you eat it Tim? I would try anything once, I'm not

sure how it would add to the greater good. You would eat it once

but no more. What about you? Absolutely, we all wanted to try it

today but there was not enough of it. It will be a long time before

there is enough of it. This is the proto-type phase to see if it is

even doable. Then it will be up to consumers. Is there any demand that

you can detect from consumers? there isn't demand, ultimately when

it comes to market if it is not affordable, if they don't like it

this will all have been just a science experiment. But the

possibility that it would offer something to consumer that rises

really out of an understanding of how we produce beef now, at least

in the United States, gives me reason to believe that it is worth

looking at this technology. Because it could solve some problems.

For example, 50,000 pounds of beef was recalled a few days ago in

Kansas city, Missouri, because it was infected with a virulant and

dangerous strain of E-coli bacteria, it can be fatal for children or

those with immune compromised systems. This won't be a problem

with this kind of beef in the production phase. We won't see the

water use or the CO2 concentrations impacted. We're not going to see

the use of hormones, antibiotics or 70% of our arable land still used

for beef production. Tim has nodded alongside apart from the last thing

where you raised your eyebrows? problem for me, probably is we

should be trying to think slightly differently about how we consume

meat any way. Eat less of it?Yeah, eat a lot less of it. I love a nice

bit of meat, if the price went up and it became more difficult I kind

of wouldn't mind. It is so depressing we put all the

scientific thought for something in a few years time that quite

possibly will give as you hamburger, how utterly depressing. It may have

cost �215,000 this time, is it not worth trying? Yes, the proof of

concept is terrific. I would rather we would use all this might to come

up with ways of making mushrooms taste really fantastic. That is

down to you two, you are the food writer and environmentalist? I'm in

favour of that. Eating less beef, I know in my family I grew up in the

Midwest, my uncles were cattlemen, I spent my summers on cattle

operations, I eat a lot less beef now in my family than back then, I

think most Americans should. We eat too much. I also think as someone

observed at the press conference today is this going to excite

vegetarians, and vegetarians should probably remain vegetarians, that

is the best thing to do of all. As a technology that could fill the

gap we have hundreds of people entering the middle-classes around

the world with different aspirations than ours to eat animal

protein, we have a growing population on top of that. So if

this could provide an option for animal protein that would eliminate

other problems, it is worth a proto-type and worth seeing if it

could make a difference. science shouldn't gross us out, the

idea we are making meat, the news story make people feel creepy, but

half the stuff we are eating, particularly in fast food, is so

much overmanufactured, the cows have been massively inflated with

grain they shouldn't. We don't see it, just a bun with lettuce. In the

United States if you wanted today see a feed lot or slaughterhouse

facility, good luck getting one of your cameras in, it is kept behind

closed doors, that is the ick factor for the beef in the United

States that we do eat. My first reaction when I heard about test-

tube beef was, that doesn't sound too appealing to me until I gave it

a second thought about what it might displace. If it displaces the

worst of beef production and provides something that consumers

accept is safe, is labelled, it meet all those otherest its, then I

think we will see if consumers like it or not and give it a go.

might, people might be squeamish about this technology b this lab-

grown stuff, as you mentioned the horsemeat scandals with the current

production, haven't we? That was truly appalling, what is really

interesting is how fast people have forgotten it. Nobody is talking

about horse any more? No, that's true and everybody is buying mince

beef off the supermarket shelves. As a chef are you keen to try other

lab-grown food to use it in your dishes? I don't suppose I would

have any objection to it if it was genuinely delicious and an

improvement on what we have. I'm more interested in thinking about

meat as a luxury good again. That is the real creative challenge I

think. But we do like our steaks, don't we, and our sasauges? And a

nice burger. That was the problem with the test, no ketchup, no

pickles. No fries. Beetroot juice, saffron. Could you have made it

taste delicious, there was saffron, beetroot juice and breadcrumbs?

Nobody jumped out and said it was delicious. Thank you very much. Now

Apology for the loss of subtitles for 44 seconds

That's almost it for tonight, apart from this, as soon as Peter Capaldi

was revealed as the new doctor who, the race was on to produce the new

sweary YouTube mash-up, this one might be the winner.

What happened to me? BEEP time travelled. E-BEEPing enough.You

need to shut your BEEPing mouth. Pick up any BEEPing weapon you can

and shut the BEEP up. Run you clever boy. BEEP off.I want you to

make a bomb and explode it, today. Life it interesting at last, I have

been so BEEPing bored for the last two years. It is the end of the

world as we know it. You are a mouse in a maze. Some parts of the

UK were subjected to torrential thundery rain today, but the rest

of the week is looking much quieter. It will be a cool start tomorrow,

but there will be plenty of morning sunshine. Then clouds going to

build, so bright or sunny spells around in the afternoon. Unlike

today it is looking mainly dry. The odd rogue shower in Northern

Ireland, one or two scattered around the north and North West of

around the north and North West of Scotland. In Scotland most will be

light and dry and bright weather inbetween. Temperatures close to

normal for the time of year. 24 degrees and the warm spot of East

Anglia and south-east England. It is a pretty quiet afternoon

compared with today across England and Wales, it won't be clear blue

skies, bright or sunny spells coming through the cloud. A vastly

different day across south-west England and Wales. Some parts of

Wales have seen around 75mms, three muchs of rain in the past 24 hours

or so. The dryer break will continue as we go deeper into the

week. There will be a few showers popping up on Wednesday and

Thursday, the odd heavy and slow moving one. It will be hit and mis.