12/11/2013 Newsnight

This programme contains flash photography.

Good evening. The readiness of British people to give money to try

to help relieve suffering has been in evidence again tonight as

millions of pounds seem to be being donated to help victims of the

typhoon in the Philippines. This is a humanitarian crisis so the DEC

needs us to act now. Please help.

Thank you. What is that makes us give to these

appeals, to some more than others and is there a better way of

organising these things? Ireland is about to become the first

eurozone country to emerge from its bail out. What has the nation

learned from its latest experience of hair shirts and pence? There is

nor charity in what people do and the way they help each other and I

think it made us better. And Lady Gaga is in town. They try

me what to do the entire time? Even now? Yes, of course.

You would have to have a heart of stone not to be distressed by the

scenes of suffering caused by the Philippines typhoon. The broadcast

of a Disaster and Emergency Committee appeal tonight is intended

to provide a practical vehicle for that sympathy. ?10 million of

taxpayers' money has already been committed and more will follow. The

actions are based on the sense that there, but for the grace of God goes

any of us. Yet the idea of a common human bond seems to be tempered by

precisely which set of human beings are afflicted. Jim Reed reports.

This is a photo of my family. I am trying to get in contact with them.

My aunties, this is my mum. Thousands of miles away from the

devastation and desperate for news. There is a huge relief underway in

South East Asia, this group of second generation British Filipinos

get together in North London. I haven't been able to contact them

directly. Maybe the lines are down anyway. They can't pick up or the

batteries are not charged. Tor tens of thousands, in the UK, with

relation in the area affected by Typhoon Haiyan, the last few days

have been full of engaged tones and unanswered Facebook messages. People

over here feel helpless. For one, we can't get in touch with a lot of our

relatives. There isn't enough information coming out from certain

areas. There is a big focal point on one particular area which badly

needs help, but there is so many other areas that are suffering.

More pictures showing the scale of the destruction emerged today.

Helicopter footage shows houses flattened and roads unpassable.

Thousands are still without food, water or shelter. There have been

reports of looting and violence in some areas. Please, if we could have

for our people, because some of them are dying, they are hungry. We need

the help and assistance of some kind hearted people.

But the death toll from one of the strongest storms ever to make land

has been revised down. Early talk of 10,000 casualties was too high said

the president of the Philippines this evening. The final figure is

still likely to be around 2,500 with more than 500,000 more displaced.

These people desperately need your help, that's why the DEC... Here in

the UK, a group of 14 charities launched their appeal to help the

victims. The likes of Oxfam and Action Aid pooled resources at a

time like this, rather than try to compete for airspace and funds with

each other. In all of what we do, we should ensure dignity for the people

we are there to serve. Its working with people. What's amazing in these

emergencies I have found over the past 20 years is that we see these

dreadful pictures on the news, but actually, you know, people are

working together, communities come together. They care for each other

and there is lots of capacity in place that we need to do better at

working alongside to ensure lives are saved and to ensure recovery

takes place. The UN has already released ?15

million worth of aid and has appealed for ?190 million worth of

assistance, but this cash is for emergency help, tents, food and

clean water, not to fund any long-term recovery plan. The Boxing

Day tsunami of 2004 generated over ?1 billion worth of aid spending,

but a later report backed by Bill Clinton said it took too long for

money to reach some areas and often the cash was wasted. The public are

keen to see results as quickly as possible. They are concerned about

the images that they are seeing, you know, people suffering and so there

is a testimony passion to give them shelter solutions as quickly as

possible in terms of tents, flat-pack houses, however, these are

often not appropriate for the context that they are in. They may

not be, you know, earthquake-resistant or hurricane

resistant or suitable for tropical zones or whatever they are in.

Across the other side of London, any talk of reconstruction means little

at the moment. This woman has been working in the UK while her children

grow up in the Philippines. She heard nothing from them since the

storm hit on Friday. As a mother, it is really heartbreaking to see all

the pictures and videos and I could picture, and I have been questioning

what about my children? What is the real condition of my children? We

might now understand the scale of the disaster in the Philippines, but

many of the stories of individuals and families have yet to be told.

Well, Owen Barder used to advise Tony Blair on aid and now works at

the Centre for Global Development. Ian Birrell is a contributing editor

for the Daily Mail. Are you impressed by the reaction to this

disaster? Yes, I think it shows the best of humanitarian that --

humanity, we want to give, we the want to help. The fact that people

are willing to of reach into their pockets and help people on the other

side of the world is impressive. Are you impressed by the mechanism?

I this I we need to do it better. We have had the lessons of the tsunami

in 2004. We have had the lessons of Haiti. We have not learned the

lessons that we have to do it quickly. But it does reach them and

it does help them. What do you make of it? The mantra

of the aid industry is that we can do it better next time and that's

always what they have been saying and they have been saying it for 50

years. Maybe they are getting better? You look at what happened in

Haiti and it was a terrible what happened, where the wishes of local

people were ignored and there were meetings being held, there were so

many people involved in the aid industry, because it is not Britain,

but it is every western country and the developing world. You get

hundreds and hundreds of groups forking in and causing chaos on the

ground. Well, what are you suggesting? The suggestion first of

all not for these, a lot of these groups are basically corporate

interests dressed up as Mother Teresa and they need to stop

thinking about their raising money and start thinking about what they

want to do a listen to people on the ground. In Haiti, there were

meetings being held without anyone there from Haiti and 0. 6% of the

money went to interests from Haiti, whereas 40 % was spent on those

supplying the aid living in expensive flats and buying expensive

cars. I know from friends that it is a

contest, who is going to get there, who is going to get the headlines on

the television, who is going to get the money? Ian, says we don't make

improvements, but I was in Ethiopia in the 1980s and I was there in 2009

and 2010 when there was another drought and the big difference in

2009 and 2010, you didn't see people going to relief centres to get fed.

Why? Because there was a safety net in place that enabled Ethiopians to

receive food and money in their villages and in their towns, in the

face of a failed rains. That's the kind of progress that's made when a

country is able to put in place its Steplts ch systems to enable its

people to stay where they are rather than to have this disaster. Things

get better and we have had the most remarkable progress a across the

developing world. One of the things that should happen in this situation

is aid agencies, both the international organisations and the

NGOs should be more transparent about what they are doing. So that

everybody can plan and know where it is that the needs are greatest.

Something like the DEC is co-ordination of aid effort, isn't

it? That's a co-ordination of raising the money, but the crucial

thing and we didn't see this in Haiti and we need to see it in the

Philippines is the money as it gets spent is spent in a way that

everybody can see who is doing what because that's the only way that

people will be able to work out on the ground where they can contribute

and in the 21st century it doesn't make sense that we don't know how

the aid is spent. Have you any thought about the

different ways we react to different disasters? Well, clearly, there is

huge sympathy for something like this which is strong on television,

if you look in the Central African Republic now and there are 400,000

displaced people. There is a huge difference in how they approach it.

The aid caravan moves on from one disaster to the other. If you look

in Haiti, $9 billion was spent on a country of ten billion people and at

the la end of -- and at the end of last year while the Red Cross had

?300 million, that was twice what was spent on permanent housing and

400,000 people were still in tents. It is obscene and my stomach turned

when I saw the activities and some of the things that people were

saying while the Haitians were frozen out of any decision making

and having their lives ruined again. It is no coincidence the mayor

called it the second earthquake and the second earthquake was the

arrival of thousands of these aid agencies trying to raise money.

You seem to be agreeing with him? If I was struck by a typhoon, I would

want somebody to come and help me, to give me food, water and shelter

and that's what people are doing and the idea that aid workers are there

because they think it is glamorous when they are working around the

clock in terrible conditions to help fellow human beings, that's obscene.

Yes, we can do it better and I want to see the aid system work better

and I am agreeing there are problems, but the idea that means

the whole exercise should be disregarded as a caravan of people

doing it in their own interests, that's cynicism. Thank you very

much. There are unmistakeable signs that

the NHS is gearing up for a crisis this winter. Downing Street has let

it be known that the Prime Minister is getting personally involved in

preparations. Like the leaves turning, warnings of a looming

calamity in accident and emergency departments come round most autumns.

But this year they are being taken more seriously than usual as the NHS

awaits tomorrow's publication of the inquiry into how to improve A

departments. Zoe Conway reports. Britain's politicians just can't

keep their hands off the leavers when it comes to the NHS.

And now the Prime Minister has decide to step in to be the A

enforcer so he can avert a winter health crisis The NHS is meant to be

largely independent of Government, but there is nothing like the threat

of a winter crisis to push a politician's buttons. The number of

people going to A departments has risen historically not least because

of an ageing population, one million more people are coming through the

doors than in 2010. Winter further challenges the system which is why

we are supporting the most under pressure A with an additional

?250 million, planning has started earlier than ever before this year.

There are new reports today of 12,000 patients spending 12 hours or

more on trolleys in A A is in crisis accord ing to the College of

Emergency Medicine and this is before the winter started. People

are asking where is the Government and what is it doing about it? So

far all they have heard is crisis, what crisis?

Andy Burnham is not the only one accusing the Government of

complacency. Over the past few years, we have seen a huge reduction

in the number of nursing staff at a time when workload is at record

levels. What we have here is a system that is not got itself geared

up to cope with what is inevitable that winter will come and unless we

are very, very lucky, there will be that surge and I am saddened to say

the planning in too many areas has not been good enough.

The latest figures on the amount of time people spend waiting on

hospital trolleys are hardly reassuring. There were over 87,000

trolley waits of between four and 12 hours between April and October this

year. Up from 47,000 two years ago. The Health Minister cuts the first

turf a new ?187,000 centre. The NHS has always been the most

politicised of public services. Its founder said that if a bed pan

dropped on a hospital corridor, its noise should resound in the Palace

of Westminster. Never mind so-called bed-blocking, wards are regularly

clogged up by Prime Ministers desperate to roll up their sleeves

and get their hands clean. But some say be warned. David Cameron might

pull leavers, but they won't necessarily be attached to anything.

The funny thing about this debate, the NHS is made up, if you look at

it, of autonomous institutions by are hospitals and foundation trusts

and what goes on in the hospitals is not actually very closely affected

by politicians or policy, but you get this theatre every time there is

worries over the NHS and how it will cope with the winterment

There are concerns the last thing A need now is Whitehall meddling.

It is really puzzling. We have seen the largest piece of legislation

about the NHS in its history, entirely designed to take

politicians out of the day-to-day running of the NHS and the rational

behind that reasonably was that when you have the politicians entirely

focussing in this war room way on what's going on, all the energy in

the system looks up to try and keep the levels above them happy when

they actually should be spending their energy looking at the service

and how to improve it and how to redesign it.

Tom, the medical director of the information is expected to recommend

a radical overhaul of the way A are run. Today, there was this hint

from Jeremy Hunt. Yes, there are difficult decisions, but they are

decisions that his Government ducked and left the public exposed as a

result. Some are already wondering whether

difficult decisions could be political speak for A closures?

Well, Cliff Mann is President of the College of Emergency Medicine which

has warned that this year could see the worst ever winter in the NHS.

You say that every year, don't you? We haven't been asked most years. We

have been asked this year and we have been warning. The Department of

Health says the NHS has never been in better shape to cope with the

winter coming? I think that most of the things that people say are true,

the problem is, it is not the whole truth. We get little soundbites of

information here and there, and we are not taking the whole picture. So

you take politicians from one side of the fence and what they say is

true, if you take politicians from the other side of the House, but

what they say is also true, but it is not the whole picture and the NHS

is a complex struck steward and -- structure.

Is it not the case that an extra what is it ?500 billion is being

spent on A over the next two years? Well, ?250 million this year

of which only a small proportion is going to A and even then only to

the 50 worst performling trusts -- performing trusts which leaves 150

trusts can no money this year. How much more money do you think you

need or is it a bottomless pit? We don't need any more money. We are

spending a lot of money, the ?250 million for this winner, last --

winter, last year we spend over ?100 million for locums so that's ?350

million, but we spend it on short-term fixes instead of sorting

out the problem. You -- you and your colleagues spent

a long time telling politicians to butt out of management of the NHS

and they do so and you make a pig's ear of it? We have never suggested

that politicians should butt out. We wanted a streamlined bureaucracy

within the NHS and that's what we haven't got.

Politician are having to wade in to bail you out at of the mess you find

yourselves in by your own account? Yes, this is the mess not of our own

making. The problems in the emergency departments up and down

the country are a mismatch between the numbers of patients attending

our departments and the numbers of staff we have to deal with that.

Whose fault is that? There has been a lack of medium and long-term

planning and no recognition if you remove credible alternatives to

out-of-hours care, the only place for people to attend is their local

accident and emergency departments and that's why numbers are rising.

And whose fault is that? That's a fault of a series of Government

decisions and decisions made by other bodies as your reporter said

which means that there has been a lack of clarity as to what those

out-of-hours services are. Are you reassured the Prime Minister

is taking personal charge of sorting things out this winter? Well, I am

always pleased to hear that senior Cabinet Ministers and the Prime

Minister himself wants to take an interest in this. I feel for a long

time the college has been trying to get our point across and for the

first base really, was to get people to hear what we're saying. Now they

are hearing what we are saying, hopefully we can move to the next

point which is where we need to take decisive action.

Thanks. There are some people who seem to

think that the way you reduce the cost of living in this country is

for the state to spend more and more taxpayers' money. They're wrong.

That was the gist of the Prime Minister's message in telling us we

have to get used to a permanently smaller state. Infuriated trades

unionists take this as evidence that David Cameron and his coterie have

no understanding of how tight things are for ordinary people. But it

prompted our political editor, Allegra Stratton, who has just about

to take off on maternity leave, to take a look at what we can make out

of Cameron's changing view on the state.

The State is being shrunk. A ?20 billion shrinkage here and more cuts

there. By the end of this pamplt and the middle of next spending on

public services will be down to less than a quarter of total UK GDP, all

reluctantly down the mroim once told us. I didn't come into politics to

make suts. Neither -- cutsment neither did Nick Clegg. Then this,

last night. We have cut the deficit by a third. That doesn't mean taking

difficult decisions on public spending. It also means something

more profound. It means building a leaner, more efficient State. We

need to do more with less. Not just now, but permanently.

The difficulty for the Conservatives is that while the public appear to

accept a shrinkage in the size of the deficit, in most polling, they

are less keen on shrunken public services, for this reason, Tories

are warned against bashing of the State, it puts swing voters off.

Efforts to shrink the State continued. Before the last general

election, the shen Shadow Chancellor announced -- the then Shadow

Chancellor announced many billions of pounds of spending cuts. One

biographer recounts that he turned to an aide and said, "Well, let's

see if this costs us the general election." The Tories know there is

scepticism about any plan to shrink the State and big public spending

cuts and for that reason, they have been sheepishly about them. When I

woke up and heard the BBC was reporting that you can make public

services better, I thought I had died and gone to heaven. What

changed? They think spending restraint. Michael Gove cut head

count at the Department of Education. 23,000 admin posts were

cut from the NHS, he said, but 5,000 doctors were taken on.

But another factor is growing, the economy is recovering, but Labour's

poll lead over the Conservatives is holding up, Tories think they have

to make voters believe that a Labour Government would scale back up

spending in public services, that it would mean a bigger State. The Prime

Minister hopes to focus voters' minds on the reality of letting

Labour back into power. He hopes that by talking about a leaner

State, he is capitalising on voter concern about runaway public

finances and also making Labour look provlogate in comparison. If the PM

continues with austerity, fresh areas must be cut in areas

untouched. So David Cameron is a tireless roller back of the State's

frontier, but not every mile of it and not this side of the election.

Of our most distinguished composers died today. Sir John Tavener was 69,

a deeply religious man who had been plagued by ill-health for much of

his life. The pain, he said this summer, had made him terribly

grateful for every moment he had left. Let's hear a little of his

work. How big a loss do you think he is?

It is a considerable loss because he forged a very individual voice. He

is rather like the English, he spoke to a huge number of people. He

started off as an avant-garde composer and wrote pieces like The

Whale. Celtic Requiem, these pieces were at the forefront of the

avant-garde and then he retreated into a spir spiritual world and

found a kind of language, that was sense uous and med tative and it

appealed to a need in people, in society, for something that was

spiritual which allowed people to look inside themselves and see their

place in a wider world. What was he like? You had the thrill

of having him compose pieces for you, but you performed for him? What

was that relationship like? Well, it was very intense because after I did

his opera Mary of Egypt, he started to write a lot of pieces for soprano

voice. The pieces he wrote for me, they got more and more complex and

difficult, but they always seemed to fit my voice and he had a very

particular sound in his mind so working together to achieve that was

quite difficult. But I think I managed to... Was he intimidating?

Sometimes, yes. He really pushed the voice, I think, even with his core

of music to the extremes. I never sang as I have sung in his music and

I have never sung as high, but another piece went as high. I sang

in the Albert Hall where I had to start on a D. It was up in the Gods

and the orchestra were down there and I had to hit this note and hold

it for several bars. But he was also, you know, very human. He had a

great sense of humour and working with him was quite, you know, good

fun. You are agreeing? Absolutely.

Although John had a manistic side he liked the finer things, fine food

and when he was younger, girls. He wasn't part of that Beatles set for

nothing. He had a wonderful white suit. He was so tall and he had this

congenital heart problem which killed him. Together with the white

suit and the white scar of, there was a white Rolls-Royce and he cut a

wonderful figure. You had this naughty boy about town, which I

rather liked. What was his relationship with the establishment

like, the musical establishment? I think they found him hard to accept

for a while because, you know, when people actually strike a chord, you

know, write the song that was done at Princess Diana's funeral, critics

and establishment look esconse, and his music speaks to millions of

people. He did a vigil which people sat through entranced. He had that

ability to take people on a journey. Did you have any sense of why he

struck this chord? What it was about his music or his presence coming

through his music? Do you know, I think he really connected with the

spiritual and he took risks to achieve that. I mean he actually

explored not just western music, he, when I first met him, he played

Indian classical music to me, and he loved Indian music. He tried to get

programme organisers to enlist this piece you mentioned which was seven

hours long. He with started at 10pm and finished with the dawn and

that's a very Indian idea... It is a happening. Exactly. It really is. He

drew instruments from China, from India, most people said it is

inconvenient, but actually, it brought another dimension in. Even

Middle Eastern elements. Not everything was a masterpiece, but a

lot of it was really wonderful Thank you very much.

It looks as if Ireland is about to become the first country in the

eurozone to emerge from the bail out programmes set up when the currency

went into spasm a few years ago. That moved the Celtic Tiger off the

list of endangered species and into the category of the extinct. But the

Irish, unlike some other parts of the eurozone took the medicine

prescribed and now it seems their economy is judged to be well

recovering. But the picture is almost as confused as the metaphors

with hordes of young people still driven to seek their fortunes

abroad. Joe Lynam brought his shovel over to Britain years ago. There

were kids around Ireland sent to school with kes ketchup sandwiches.

I just feel we exist as a family from month to month. Ireland will

emerge as a much more stable, much more realistic place. How many

people here intend to emigrate in the next two or three years?

The Irish economy collapsed five years ago, when a giant property

bubble burst taking the banking system with it. Because Ireland was

locked into the euro, it couldn't relieve pressure by devaluing its

currency, a bail out from the EU and IMF ensued and so too did tough

austerity. Ireland is forecast to grow by over

1% this year, the fact that it is growing at all is thanks in large

part to the tech sector. Welcome to Dublin.

The capital of Ireland. Welcome to Ireland. The new capital

of the digital world. APPLAUSE

Tech, whilst employing 8% or 9% of the workforce accounts for 40% of

its exports. Tech giants like Facebook, Google

and scwap twitter have their European offices in Ireland. Here

for for tax breaks and talent. Emigration is the stain which

Ireland simply cannot wash off. Whereas before, it was the

uneducated who left for the US, Canada or the UK.

Now, 1,000 well educated, mostly young people are taking their

talents overseas every week. Just when they are needed most at home.

Robert Burn is a psychology under graduate at UCD, he wants to work in

hospitals, but the public sector is slimming down and had pay cuts of a

fifth across-the-board. So Robert is job hunting in Australia and New

Zealand. I grew up in an environment where everybody was praising the

economy and everyone thought the Irish economy was the best thing

ever, but we have seen it is not sustain bible and it is really

affecting the youth. So personally, it is upsetting to feel that I have

to leave the country and leave behind my family and friends.

Newsnight arranged for 60 students to come together for a he debate

about emigration and their future. We are here to find out what

motivates people, whether it is getting some experience and coming

back or the fact there are no opportunities here in Ireland?

People have lost family members through suicide because of financial

pressure. There is kids around Ireland who have been sent to school

with ketchup sandwiches. We are here, we are safe enough, protected

enough, but there is people and families in this country without

hope. Do you feel the anger that some young under graduates may feel,

their prospects are withering in front of them? No. I don't feel it

and I haven't observed it and I think if you are an under graduate

with no plan and no specific goal in mind, it is very easy to become

disillusioned and upset about the future. We have employers contacted,

I have employers contacting me every day. Who laughed at that prospect?

People under 25 are earning 25% less. People who are two or three

years older are earning 17% more in the same role as people who are

under 25 year. Despite the seeming pessimism, they

are positive about the future. I want a show hands, no one is allowed

to abstain. Who is optimistic? Whatever the evidence is, Irish

people always feel that things could be worse and you find people in

Ireland will tell you that at least we are not Greece. And they will

feel it is about to get better. Unlike the Greeks or Spanish, the

Irish didn't vent their anger on the streets, so what does that say about

their character and have they changed since the crisis. One famous

Irish boxer thinks so. I think it has create more care in the

community. More cohesiveness within society in general. People are

helping out more often. There is more charity in what people do and

the way they help each other and I think it made us better.

Maybe taking it on the chin, we have had a lot of hard times, a lot of

people of my age and younger had to emigrate and go abroad and find work

and life abroad and probably won't come home at all maybe and you know,

that's hard from a friend's point of view and from a family point of

view. The word is Ireland's demise and

potential rise, better illustrated than its property market. House

prices crashed by almost 60% when the crisis struck, but have started

rising again in Dublin and the main cities.

How much would this place typically sell for? OK, at the moment, this

would sell between 525,000 and 550,000. The same house 12 months

ago was probably more around the 450,000 mark.

70,000 or 8le 0,000 drop in the space of 12 months? Absolutely.

Whoever buys this house will have a smaller mortgage than those who

bought in the five or so years before the crash in 2008. They

include Mandy Freeman, a theatre nurse earning 36,000 per annum, but

describes herself as one of Ireland's working poor. Her income

has been slashed by a quarter. There is a deficit in the pay packet every

month. We have had to cut our health insurance. We don't have family

holidays anymore and we have had to cut a lot of corners in relation to

shopping and utility bills and outgoings. I feel we exist as a

family from month to month. Mandy was typical of many who

believed the boom would never end so badly. One prominent Irish

businessman feels that the Irish knew they would have to atone.

Somewhere deep down there in the Catholic mentality was an

understanding that actually, we will have to pay for this. People were

being driven by, you know, a quick buck, the opportunity to make money,

the pushing of things. There was a sense that something was lost and

you had this huge influx of people from outside who did most of the

work. There was a kind of almost a laziness that crept into Irish

society. Ireland still has 13% unemployment

and one of the highest levels of personal and Government debt in

Europe, but GDP and job creation is up and confidence that it is nudging

higher. Ireland was the model pupil who took its punishment stowically.

Well John Bruton is a former Irish Prime Minister. Ann Pettifor is

director of Policy Research in macro economics. , what is the lesson? We

have formed a direct investment sector, you menning mentioned

pharmaceuticals, and financial services and also we have made this

a country where it is easy to set-up a new business, the bureaucracy

involved in establishing a new business is small and that has

encouraged a lot of Irish people to set-up businesses, spinning off from

the hi-tech sector and has enabled us to be in a situation now where

our services exports exceed our goods exports. So we are a dynamic

economy and we are also an open economy in contrast to say Greece,

Portugal or Spain where they basically trade within their own

nation. We export and import much more which means that... Sorry to

cut across you there. It is a very a mixed picture when you see a lot of

young people emigrating, a lot of people had to take serious cuts in

their living standards, and worry about making ends meet and yet,

according to the IMF and the European Central Bank, this is an

economy that's resurgent? I heard Joe Lynam say that as well. There

has been an uptake in the quarterly numbers on GDP, the European

Commission says the economy continues to contract. We have high

levels of unemployment. We have incomes falling. We have households

with 200% of their debt to disposable income and we have a

country that's effectively evicting a generation of its people, 1,000

people a week and it is a tax haven. So I mean I really think that the

talk... You wouldn't think the two of you are talking about the same

country? There is a lot of spin going on about Ireland. The economy

has not been restructured, not a lot has changed since the crisis. John

Bruton? I would like Ann to no he at the height of the crisis, we were

losing jobs. The number employed was doing reduced by 8,000 a month. We

are adding jobs at a rate of 3,000 a month and that's changed completely.

Ireland is not a tax haven. Ireland made a decision to have a low

corporate tax rate, but that's a transparent system of taxation with

no special deals for individual companies like you see in certain

Continental European countries. Of course, we have a problem with

personal debt. That's how we got into the difficulty we are in, but

where the level of personal debt is being reduced and the Government has

on every occasion met the fiscal targets for dealing with its

financial problems. One of the reasons why Ireland is having

trouble accessing the ESM is that Ireland's European partners are

really angry about the corporate tax levels, about the fact that they are

effectively subsidising Ireland. This is another argument altogether?

No, we are being lent money by our European partners upon which we are

paying interest. That's not a subsidy. That's a deliberate

decision by our European partners that they want to keep the European

single currency together, they don't want Europe going down the route of

devaluation and inflation of the kind we had in the 70s and # 0s --

80s, they are building a single currency and that solidarity is

being shown to Ireland and we appreciate it and hopefully in due

time we will be able to reciprocate it? By under cutting her partners in

tax terms, this is causing quite a lot of anger not just in Europe, but

also in the United States? No. Ireland had this tax rate... I am

going to have to cut you off because we don't have anymore time for this

discussion. I am sorry. Thank you.

Now a rare encounter with genius. The shy chanteuse Lady Gaga is

coming back from a debilitating illness with a new album. At a

characteristically modest launch event in which she was transported

by flying frock. She told the world that her latest work is not really

about me at all, not about money and mass production, but about moving

the world away from a place of vanity and ego. This Mahatma-like

ambition was irresistible to Miranda Sawyer of the Culture Show.

Gaga. We can back. Thank you forking having me. You had an enforceted

absence between the last album and this one due to illness. How were

you as a patient? And how is it to be back? Well, I guess I was a good

patient because I was so excited to rejuvenate my body. It was exciting

in a way. You feel like an infant, but in another way, I felt dead all

the time because I couldn't be on stage so I guess I just really took

to enjoying and appreciationing the parts of what I do, that are life is

art all the time as a way too make it through that sort of torture I

was feeling. I think it was good for me because this stage is, you know,

it is a place that I started to rely on, I think, very much and the fans

and that interconnection and when it went away, I had to find a more

spiritual connection with music and art and I am sort am on that journey

path now. When you this I of how you present

yourself on stage. If you think about a lot of pop artists and

female artists who are presented in a straightforwardly sexual way. They

have to be really good looking and presented as though the first thing

you are going to react to is do you fancy them. You don't do that,

sometimes you do and sometimes you don't. How do you regard your body

then within that context? Well, I would say that in pop music, in that

particular sphere that there is one dimensional quality to sexuality. I

think the difference between what I do and that, if I can maybe start

there, is there is an intention always behind the sexuality if the

sexuality is there, but most of the time I don't particularly find

myself to be very sexy actually and in the beginning of my career, I

think that some of this exploration of covering myself up and

transforming into other icons and other states of life was a sense of

sexual freedom for me because I felt numb by my experiences and I wanted

to escape things. You use sex on this album in quite, in an

interesting way. There is lots of different aspects to it, but often

it is used as a way into love, it seems? The sex is hopefully going to

lead on to something that will touch you a little more. Would you say

that's right? Yes, I would say that's right, but I don't create

with the intention of the finale, if that makes any sense? I don't always

know what is going to come out of it. So it is really beautiful for me

to hear your reading of my experience with sex and love at this

time because my earlier experiences with sex were quite perverted and

scary, terrifying, fear. I don't know, it reminds me of these things

we are sitting around. Yeah, they are quite spooky, aren't

they? It was a little bit terrifying for me so now I have really great

sex. Which is good k, I'm glad to hear it. It is a natural change.

When you are talking about your reaction to your fans, your

relationship seems to be particularly intense. It is. What do

you get from them? Not just when you are performing, but when you see

them outside the hotel, when they talk to you? Well, I choose to

receive their love and because of that, it has become very intimate

over the years. I think that you know maybe in your suggestion that

my relationship with my fans is different than some other pop

artists, I think some of it is because there is a separation

between them and the work for some people. That what I'm doing here and

what is happening here are two different things. But because I've

studied since I was 11 years old, I have a sense of, I have a sense. So

because of that I am aware of their energy all the time and I receive

it, so I need it for my work. I can't survive as what I have become

without them. I didn't mean to interrupt then, sorry. I didn't mean

to talk for so long! These things happen, you know, you have got a lot

to say. Do I? I might sound total sheet and your ratings will go down

and you will wonder why you put me on this show.

You can see more of that interview on a Culture Show special.

Until then, sleep well.