05/04/2016 Newsnight

Iceland's Prime Minister quits

after revelations in the Panama Papers.

Our Prime minister insists he's tough on corruption,

so is it time to impose direct rule

on the tax havens who answer to Britain?

As trouble brews in paradise, we'll put that

Companies in Bermuda pay taxes, I am the taxman, I am the finance

minister, I can tell you, that we pay taxes.

And the former foreign office minister who took

back control of the Turks and Caicos tells us how he would do it now.

One week on from news that Port Talbot is up for sale, ministers are

to consider loaning money for a new power plant to bring down its huge

energy bills. How much our energy costs and the government energy

policy really to blame for the problems. And will anyone pay up for

its multi-billion pound pension burden? We will ask the former

pensions Minister for his view. the new prince of pop is under

attack for his hair style. Are Justin Bieber's white

dreadlocks an insult The Panama Papers have

claimed their first scalp. A big one, the Prime Minister

of Iceland, Sigmundur Gunnauggson, who, the papers revealed,

set up a company in the British Virgin Islands

with his wife and then, when he entered parliament,

failed to declare it. Our own Prime minister who had been

under pressure over the revelation of his late father's involvement

in a Panama based fund for investors, today insisted he had

no shares, no offshore trusts

and no offshore funds. It is the central role which British

dependencies have played in what Jeremy Corbyn today called

the encouragement of tax avoidance on an industrial scale that led him

to echo the call made by the former Business Secretary Vince Cable

on Newsnight last night for the imposition of direct rule

on British overseas territories VOICEOVER: The Panama papers have

claimed their first big scalp. CHEERING

A crowd here in Reykjavik have been demanding the resignation of

Sigmundur Gunnlaugsson, the prime on a stir of Iceland, if you days ago

he was dismissing claims that he had hidden wealth offshore in Panama and

today he quit over the scandal, his finance minister also implicated is

still hanging on. David Cameron has come in for some heat as well, his

late father, who worked in finance, used Panama as well. I own no

shares, I have a salary as Prime Minister, and I have some savings,

which I get some interest from, and I have a house which we used to live

in, which we now let out while we are living in Downing Street, that

is all I have. No shares, no offshore trust, no offshore funds,

nothing like that. The Labour leader focused today not an Panama but on

some of the British Overseas Territories, 14 of them, former

crown Colonies, still dependent on the UK. Many, like Montserrat and

the Falklands, have not become financial centres, others, have made

their way onto lists of tax havens. There is particular attention on bee

media, in the Atlantic, the British Virgin Islands and the Cayman

Islands in the Caribbean, and Gibraltar, in Europe. These

territories are accused of enabling excessive secrecy, of the sort that

allow the Icelandic Prime Minister to keep his investments hidden in

Panama. You can go through the British Virgin Islands, classic

case, you can incorporate a company very cheaply there, and then you

can, that company can own assets, and even though you, the rich

person, are the beneficial owner of the company, you can put nominees in

the way. If you go to the British Virgin Islands and try to find out

more about the company, and I have done that myself, you bang your head

against a brick wall. To give you a sense of what this secrecy means on

the ground, this is a company filing from the British Virgin Islands, LW

group Limited, 350578. It tells you the number of the lawyers who set up

the company and their address, the company current lawyers, and their

address. What it does not tell you is that this company is the owner of

a number of large British companies, namely, yodel, the delivery company,

and Littlewoods, the shop, it is not tell you who the shareholders are,

it is the Barclay brothers in this case. We can work out from filings

elsewhere what the Barclay brothers company is but other owners have

stayed off the radar. What can the Foreign Office do? Jeremy Corbyn

alluded to the fact that in 2009, London imposed a wrecked role on the

Turks and Caicos Islands because of local corruption, he suggested the

Foreign Office to do the same for overseas Territories who do not play

ball on secrecy. Actually it is more likely they would use another power.

The Foreign Office's final big lever is legal, it can pass laws or order

council through the Privy Council Office the territories into line,

that relies upon the overseas territories doing as they are told,

and not declaring independence. Some of the bigger overseas territories,

like Bermuda, may be tempted by that path. The Foreign Office considers

this a nuclear option, they would prefer to chivvy and encourage but

use little bargaining chips. The dramatic pressure is there preferred

weapon. It is seen as a bunch of banana republics, people can dismiss

that, what we are intimately involved in this issue, in this

problem, we in Britain, and in Europe. European tax savings, the

United States as well, the rich world is part of the problem, that

is where the tax havens are, you are not going to stash money into

Nigeria, you will stash it somewhere rich and developed. One thing has

become clear, Ireland's tax havens are only one corner of the

controversy around tax. -- island. STUDIO: Earlier I spoke

to the Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister

of Bermuda Bob Richards and asked him what he says

to Jeremy Corbyn's suggestion that places like Bermuda should be

brought under direct rule. I would say that the need is a

country that has its own constitution.

We have a democratically elected government that operates under the

rule of law under the Constitution, and the Constitution is an agreed

document with the United Kingdom government. We would not expect the

United Kingdom, a government that has great respect for the rule of

law, to breach their own covenants. How do you justify to British

taxpayers that you provide a place for people to hide the they are due

to pay in the countries where they are based? That is a question based

on a full is assumption. We have our own laws, our own taxes. Every

company that incorporates in Bermuda has two provide the government

agency, the bemused and monetary authority, the names of the

beneficial owners of those companies. -- the Bermudan monetary

authority. That includes trusts. It is a beneficial ownership register.

You provide the information but you do not deny that they are not paying

the taxes they are due to pay in their own country, for example,

Britain. If the British authorities think that some Britain has a

company in Bermuda, and they are not paying their taxes, we will assist

the UK Government, your government's laws around taxes, are for them.

Anything that we can do, the only thing we can do, is cooperate and

assist with you when asked through the proper channels. Why do you

think that in 2013, David Cameron said to Bermuda that you had to get

your house in order? I think that he misspoke, quite frankly, because

insofar as a business concern, the United Kingdom is planning to

construct a beneficial ownership registry. So that you know that. --

I'm sure that you know that. The media has had such a registry for 70

years, 70... It does not mean that you are not a tax haven. Yes it

does? Yes, it does, the people of Bermuda pay taxes, companies pay

taxes, I am the taxman, I am the finance minister, I can tell you,

the taxes come to about 18% of GDP. We pay taxes. Every time I put up

taxes I get howls of from residents, as I did in this budget session. The

notion that we can run a country, run a government, without taxes, is

not really realistic. Do you put yourself in a different bracket from

the Cayman Islands and the British Virgin Islands? I'm not going to

comment on overseas territories, the only thing I can say to you is this:

there seems to be a tendency on the part of not just the UK but the UK

included and other countries to treat all overseas territories the

same. One size fits all. I continue categorically, one size does not fit

all. The constitutions of those islands that you mention are

different from Bermuda, we have a higher level of self-government,

than they do. From the beginning, from 1947, our forebears had the

notion that we did not want just anybody doing business in Bermuda,

we would screen them and we would approve them, and discard the ones

that did not meet our standards. That is the reason that you do not

see the new dimensions in those Panama papers. By the way, I must

remind you, the UK is mentioned in the Panama papers! But, not Bermuda.

Thank you for joining us. STUDIO: Joining me now from Cardiff

is Chris Bryant Labour MP who was the minister responsible

for the last time we took powers imposed direct rule on the Turks

and Caicos Islands in March 2009, though in that instance it was to do

with a corruption scandal. Wait a minute, what a load of

baloney you have heard, Bermuda certainly has no income tax, no

property tax, no sales tax, no inheritance tax! It is a tax haven!

The whole point of the way some overseas territories have

constructed their tax regime is not just to be competitive, but is to

attract people to try to hide their international assets there. Do you

agree with Jeremy Corbyn that direct rule should be imposed on the

territories and dependencies? The one thing that was said that was

right, we should not treat them all exactly the same way. You have

criticised Bermuda, could there be direct rule? Not tomorrow, no there

should not, there are plenty of other powers that the UK Government

already has, which it has, for some reason for the last six years it has

been choosing not to exercise. Sorry to enter, let me clarify the

position, is Jeremy Corbyn wrong to lump them together? He has not lump

them together, we are not saying that we should suddenly install

direct rule over the Falkland Islands, Pitcairn, the British

Indian Ocean Territory! The point is really important, in Turks and

Caicos, the cavernous is still chaired by the British governor. --

the cabinet. All legislation must receive Royal assent, because they

are part of the British Crown. There are plenty of powers that the

government has. Let me give you one instance, when I was Foreign Office

minister, in 2009/10, several of the financial services overseas

territories, which Jeremy Peace writes 2.2, they were insignificant

financial problems and they needed to borrow a lot of money. -- which

is right to point to. I refuse to allow them to borrow more money,

until such time as they brought in some broader tax basis, because it

is one thing to try to have a competitive tax regime, I understand

that, but it is another to have a set of rules which means that you

can hide the beneficial ownership of significant assets from the rest of

the world. It is worth bearing in mind that 8% of the worlds wealth is

hidden. Let's be clear, a lot of what is being revealed and will

still be revealed and is yet to be revealed was during Labour's watch.

This is a long-standing problem. I agree.

It is not one-sided fits all but is there an argument for taking Turks

and Caicos under direct control and how would you do it? You would have

two order in Council, a pretty straightforward process. But it is

the implications of it. Of doing that, what would they be? They would

be dramatic. That would be the nuclear option. I would say you need

to use all the other powers and I'm mystified why why the Conservative

government in 2010 or Coalition Government, decided to allow all bad

are linked to go forward for all those other countries without

requiring them to move forward on transparency. The one point in

relation to Bermuda, which is key, it is all very well to gather

information within Bermuda, on beneficial ownership, but you need

to share that between all the different dependencies, overseas

territories and the UK Government, to make sure you're doing it

properly. And in the end, my constituents spit with fury when

they hear that there is one set of rules for the ultra rich and another

set of rules for everyone else. Everyone else has got to pay their

fair share of tax and why should these big corporations not. Why

should wash and go or kitten able to hide ownership of properties through

companies in BBI or why should we in the UK not be able to know that the

president of the United Arab Emirates owns vast chunks of the

London property market. Thank you very much for that, Chris Bryant.

There are two big imepdiments to a potential sale of Tata Steel,

we'll deal with the massive pension burden in a moment,

but the other is the cost of energy, twice what Germany pays.

Industry, and not just the steel industry,

But is there an inventive way to tempt a buyer in,

through an energy deal, or is energy a red herring?

Here's the FT's energy correspondent Kiran Stacey,

who we asked to shed some light on the issue.

Among the attempts to save steel-making at Port Talbot,

one intriguing idea sits on the table.

Supposing the government could lend the money

for a buyer to build their own gas power station

The cripplingly high energy costs, about which Tata has

repeatedly complained, would no longer be an impediment.

But how much are energy costs and the government energy

policy really to blame for the company's problems?

When steel companies are put under pressure and profit

margins are squeezed, or even wiped out completely,

those fixed costs and costs with reasonable variations,

like electricity, become a much bigger issue.

And that is what we have seen over the last two or three years.

There is no question that electricity prices for heavy

Higher in fact than any other country in the EU.

One explanation is the subsidies given to renewables such as wind

Like us, their subsidies are paid for by putting levies

But unlike us, the German government has given large industrial users

9 billion euros back on their bills since 2013.

In that time the UK has paid out just ?160 million.

Melting steel at temperatures of almost 1300 Celsius

But how much of an impact do energy prices and green subsidies actually

Of that 9.5p per kilowatt hour of electricity that UK heavy

industry paid in 2014, this is how it broke down.

The raw electricity accounts for 55% of the cost.

Delivering it accounts for another 27%.

And energy and climate change policies account for 15%.

Of the overall costs of running a blast furnace such

as those at Port Talbot, electricity accounts for about 6%.

Altogether therefore, green policy accounts for around 1%

of what it costs to melt steel at the South Wales site.

The figures you have seen are about electricity.

We are talking in Port Talbot largely about gas.

And gas is not affected by this at all.

And British Gas prices are about medium for the whole of Europe.

So it cannot be this, i.e., green taxes, which has affected

the closure or the threat of closure of Port Talbot.

There are lots of other things that could have done it, but above all,

it is the international price of steel which has

The government could of course remove green levies altogether.

It could, in the words attributed to David Cameron,

That would give you your one, maybe 2% saving on the cost

But compared to the 30% drop in the price of some steel products

worldwide in the last year, I'm not sure that that is going

to make the difference needed to save the British steel industry.

It is possible that generous government subsidies could pull

companies on the cusp of going under back from the brink.

But it seems that in the case of Tata, their problems

The other huge issue surrounding Tata or any other potential buyer is

pensions. With me now in the studio

is Steve Webb, who was Pensions Minister for the five years

of the coalition government. In your view is any potential buyer

going to take on the pension burden? It looks pretty toxic to me. You

have enough trouble making money selling steel but if you're worried

also about the cost of pension promises already made but the fact

that the pension deficit could blow up again in the future, you just

never knew a pension fund deficit and any purchaser would not want

that level of uncertainty. What would the most likely outcome be

question mark in a normal situation, if a business is running and become

insolvent, the pension fund if it is short of money as this is, and it

changes by the day. Potentially it runs into billions by some measures.

140,000 people involved, not just the workers working for Tata at the

moment. Yes, the people actively working, and another 30,000 who have

not yet retired, a round 80,000 to have retired. If the money goes into

the Pension Protection Fund, would you think is most likely, they will

not get 100% of their action. -- pension. It will not replace every

penny of the pension you're going to get. So men and women would lose

their pension. And the hardest-hit would be the longest serving. Just

explain why that is. No one is getting a full pay-out. If you have

not yet reached pension age you get 90% of something, that something is

capped. If you've worked in the industry man and boy all your life,

you could build up a pension or perhaps 60,000 a year but the cap

would take you down to around 30. You could lose potentially up to

half your pension. There is also an issue over whether it was index

linked. Again that would be the long serving workers who lose out. You

have brought in something to try to amend this, but it was not passed. I

thought it was wrong to cap long-term workers. If you have a

decent pension because you worked in a scheme of your life, it is not

their that it is capped so hard. So last year, I legislated for a bigger

cap for longer workers but that has not been implemented. It is that cap

plus 3%. And why has it not been implemented? I guess it has not been

a priority, to be fair to the new government, they have been doing

other things, but it ought to be a priority. Long serving workers need

this. And there is no impediment to David Cameron for example doing this

tomorrow. Detailed regulations could be done in a matter of months. So

before all this happens, it could be done. One of the other ideas being

floated is the idea that the government as it did with Royal

Mail, would take on the pension burden. And you rules would preclude

that, do you think, or not? It would be challenging to say the industry

is a special case. And the government would be worried that the

car industry, defence, aerospace, they would be worried about the

president. Not that they could not afford to, today they would not be a

problem but promises would need to be kept for decades to come. I think

the worried would be the president. Anti-EU? You're not allowed to

subsidise your own industries where the complete with other people. So

the EU takes the view there is too much steel capacity so that is hard

to see that working for the government.

The Canadian singer songwriter Justin Bieber has been accused

of cultural appropriation for wearing his blond

As someone who in the past defended US reality TV star Kylie Jenner's

right to style her hair in corn rows,

he is not unaware of the implications of his new hairstyle.

But are the Rolling Stones guilty because they appropriated soul blues

What is cultural appropriation and what is cultural appreciation?

This programme, the proud boast would be meaningless first with

Justin Bieber news if we were not all over his latest hairstyle.

The Canadian pop star has been dividing opinion with his new

hairdo. Are these dreadlocks and if so is it cultural appropriation as

some have claimed? Another man got into trouble on a San Francisco

campus for his haircut. You say I cannot have the hairstyle because of

your culture? Are you Egyptian? I have certainly been told, made aware

in no uncertain terms that the hairstyle I have had have been

deemed too black or not appropriate for that situation. So again of

white person is able to just kind of experiment with these hairstyles as

though there some of costume and is not subject to any of the same

stigma that a black person might be. It is frustrating.

At this busy mixed barbershop in London this evening the reaction to

the Justin Bieber Barnet Fair Rory seemed to be, keep your hair on. I

wish I had that amount of hair! Why not. If you've got the hair, you can

do whatever you want with it. I think they look nice. I do. The

crossover between cultures, it is predominately known as an

Afro-Caribbean type of thing. It looks a bit like punk. Not raster or

anything. That does not look very good! He is copying the black spiral

of dreadlocks I suppose. But he has changed it up a bit. It is like Mick

Hucknall and boy George, they tried to do something like that. If he had

come to you what would you have said this remark he would be in the chair

right there! I would ask one customer to get up and get him

straight in the chair, Justin Bieber!

Joining me in the studio to discuss this further is Ian Dunt the Editor

of "politics.co.uk", Emma Dabri an academic and writer.

And from our BBC studios in New York writer Chimene Suleyman.

Good evening. It is a particular debate in the United States. Do you

think that Justin Bieber has done something wrong? I think we should

not necessarily hold celebrities to a higher status than the rest of us.

The issue really, he is allowed to do what he wants to do with his own

hairstyle. But we have a responsibility to each other and

responsibility to marginalised communities to listen to why this

had them or if there is something we are doing is harmful. What might be

harmful about that. And then make an informed decision. In your opinion

what is harmful? I think there is a fine line between cultural

appropriation and cultural appreciation. It is a fine line. But

a line nonetheless. Appropriation I think, there has been a lot of

miscommunication about what the word means. It is not about necessarily

enjoying someone else's cultural aesthetic. It is about taking an

aspect of something that belongs to someone else, without their

permission, and profiting from it. Let me put that to Ian Durrant. It

is someone taking something from another culture, taking advantage

for example of a marginalised culture. Like chicken tikka masala

or Elvis Presley and the blues, which basically created rock 'n'

roll. Exactly that. We are people, we mix cultures and we mix

artistically. And bank god we do because if we do not we are

functioning in an almost identical way to the way the far right has

always asked us to in our little identity ghettos. That seems more

severe than the haircut of Justin Bieber. Does it matter? I think

saying that Elvis began rock 'n' roll is typical of what happens when

we see cultural appropriation at its finest. One generally of white

artist discredited and history will credit this person as being

responsible for something that has been born often out of black

struggle. You say that about the Rolling Stones as well? If you are

going to save the invented rock 'n' roll, that is a problem. Two said

they invented it, it is spurious. It is inaccurate. And it is crucial as

well the idea that the question was, is it an insult to African culture.

I think when we live in a time when African culture is diverse, is it

still routinely stigmatised and presented as letter, as primitive

and underdeveloped. But at the same time there is a systematic

extraction of African resources, physical, material and cultural.

That is when it gets into appropriation. It is not

appreciation, we do not actually appreciate African culture when

black people are participating in that. But only when a white person

starts to take ownership. Was Elvis taking the blues and doing

something with it, was that an act of cultural appropriation? The fact

that he is now known as the king of rock and roll... It speaks to the

fact that a white person will always end up with being predicted with an

innovation that has come from black struggle and creativity. So that was

a bad thing, most people would say that started a rich cultural

heritage we have all enjoyed. Often when something is taken, in the

past, they get the credit for it? And we live in a racist society,

unfair, but this is not a sensible way of dealing with that.

What would you regard as being an act of cultural appreciation? It

tends to happen more organically, I grew up in London, there is a

diverse community there, often what happens is that subcultures are

formed through that process. It has the be an organic thing. To go back

to what has been said about erasure, in the last week, with the debate

that was happening around Rory Goldstein, who was wearing

dreadlocks at a San Francisco University, there was a lot of real

commitment to the history behind the dreadlocks, how may people wanted to

mention that the Celts also wore dreadlocks. And Vikings. What

happened in that conversation, even in that debate was that the

African-American community, the black community, the Rastafarian

community, were deleted from the discussion. -- Corey Goldstein. To

favour a group of people that has not existed for the last thousand

years. It is... It is this level of erasure that we are talking about. A

different type of erasure, as you might call it, if you look at John

Cena walls, who got a lot of flak for taking a Bollywood theme in

India as part of a cold play music video. Was she guilty of cultural

appropriation? -- Beyonce Knowles. Cultural appropriation is not just

about taking the signifiers of a different cultural group and wearing

them and using them, it is about power dynamics, as far as I'm aware,

there is not such a discrepancy of power dynamics between

African-Americans and Indians, there is not a systematic use of Indian

culture by African-Americans for their own material and cultural

gain, in the same way that global popular culture takes and takes and

takes from black culture, lack people are rarely credited. Do you

accept the difference, Ian, that if Beyonce Knowles, for instance,

because there is similarity in terms of power, between African-American

culture and England's culture, is it OK for her to wear dreadlocks? --

and Indian culture. You are saying there is a difference, yes. Power

dynamic start important that does not mean that one thing is immoral

one and moral another, we should not do some assessment of relative

levels of the scrum and nation. Is there a danger that this will lead

to more division, the more this has been emphasised. I think that there

is an organic exchange of cultures that happen, that kind of

contributes to London culture and too many manifestations of

contemporary culture. There is actually a far more... There is a

far more raw and cynical use of, within popular culture, really of

things that come from blackness, bearing in mind, blackness and

African this is still routinely subjected to this concept of being

inferior and lesser. And yet at the same time every blue seems to be

obsessed with the cultural output. -- Africaness. The calculation on

this, when I look at someone, I need to look at the race when I make an

evaluation of whether they are culturally appropriating or not...

Anti-racist teaching has been to look at what some things rather than

how they look, this runs against that. Thank you all very much

indeed. Riad Sattouf is a Franco-Syrian

graphic novelist who worked on Charlie Hebdo for a decade,

before the attack, won a Cesar for his first film and has now

put his own nomadic childhood between France, Libya and Syria

into a graphic novel memoir. It's a best seller in France,

has been translated into 15 languages,

and is about to be published here. The title of the memoir,

The Arab of the Future, refers to his father's belief that

Arab nationalism, as evinced by Colonel Muammar Gaddafi,

would transform the Arab world. And so in 1980 he takes his French

wife, whom he met at the Sorbonne in Paris, and toddler Riad off,

first to Libya and then to his family village near Homs

in Syria where comically nothing ever appears to go right for this

idealist bombastic man. We witness all this

through the the sensory the urine smell from

Libyan men and the sharp

and spicy air in France. But the book doesn't shy away

from his Syrian family's First of all, why have you begun

this odyssey, this is only the first part of what will eventually be your

life in the graphic novel. In 2011I had to help a part of my family that

were still living in Homs to come to France and I had difficulty

obtaining authorisation in France for them. So I wanted to tell, buy

comics, what was happening in the French administration. To tell the

story, I had to tell it from the beginning. So I started this

project. Early on the cartoon, you allude to your own ability as a

draw. -- in the cartoon. When other kids are drawing pictures, you are

drawing pictures of the French president! I tell the story of my

future, with my father, who was Syrian, my mother, French, I tell

the story, the birth of the ambition to become a cartoonist. Sometimes

people say that you are gifted to music, to drawing, I was very

interested to show that I think it does not exist! For me, for example,

one day, I had drawn a character like that, my grandmother, she

thought that it was the president, Pompidou, so in her eyes, I was a

genius. But then, you scribble, and you are rude and so forth, it is

more that you are controversial, as you are as a cartoonist. I was very

good at drawing when I was a child. To be like other people, I faked it!

One of your earliest memories is seeing Colonel Gaddafi, when you go

to Libya, your father idealises what he stands for, you see him

everywhere, you see him in the school, on the billboards. This idea

that dictators, early on in your life, become a very big thing for

you. My father was an educated man but from a very poor family, he was

for education, modernity, he was against religion. He had very strong

paradox, for example, he was admiring Colonel Gaddafi, he was

admiring Bashar al-Assad, he was dreaming of making one day a coup.

He wanted to execute everybody! He was obsessed... He wanted to become

somebody powerful. As a boy, it is what I am telling in the book, I

admired my father, and I thought that everything he was telling me

was the truth. Actually, difficult and dark elements in the book, what

happens when you go to the village, near Homs, where your father was

raised, you meet, first of all, children that you play with and your

cousins. Children are playing with plastic soldiers, and saying that

these are is really soldiers, cut off their heads, they are Jewish. My

father was from a Syrian family, he became a doctor. He had been offered

to become a teacher at Oxford. He preferred to go back to the Arabic

world and Syria, we went to live in his village, to this small peasant

village. Near Homs. In the village, a very rude life. Syria was obsessed

with Israel, all of the children... You were inculcated at an early age,

your cousins thought you looked Jewish, they beat you up. They did

not think I looked Jewish, but it was because I was French origin, so

when you are from foreign origin, it was analysed that France was an ally

of the United States, the United States is an ally of Israel! When

you were French, you were Israelis! LAUGHTER

They were telling me that I was a Jewish! The first Arabic word I

heard was the word who Jewish. You produced this book am which has been

fated by both the left and the right in France, very good response to it.

-- feted. I wonder if some in the Arabic world think you have been

disrespectful, you are very funny about what you see as a medieval

view, actually... LAUGHTER ... Of the village near Homs, you

would presumably say on the other side, your grandmother was French. I

am telling the story of my family and my life. My family in Syria,

some of them read that there was a book, they said, it was like that.

It is very known. I'm just telling the point of view of the children in

a small village, near Homs, and I let the reader make their own

judgment on it. Thank you very much for joining us.

Before we go, let's take a look out of the windows.

Well, this studio doesn't have any, but the artist Gillian Wearing,

in a collaborative project with people all round the world,

has created a new artwork that celebrates the very different

views that people enjoy from their windows.

Your Views will premiere at the University of Brighton Gallery

from 30 April to 29 May as part of the 50th anniversary edition

of Brighton Festival and HOUSE festival.

Here are a few windows. Goodnight.

Good evening to you, looks like the weather is going to be very

changeable across the UK during Wednesday, and so from our two hour