26/01/2012 This Week

Tonight, with the Oscar nominations announced this week, takes you to

A silent film The Artist piles up the nominations, presidential

matinee idol Barack Obama puts tax and fairness at the heart of his

re-election campaign. We can restore an economy where everyone

gets a fair shot and everyone does their fair share and everyone plays

Back at home, Bishop performing in the House of Lords turn up the

volume to fight for fairness over welfare reforms. Czar of the small

screen, writer and ideas man, Alain de Botton says we should all feel a

bit more charitable about paying our taxes. The horrible process of

paying tax could be given some of the heart-warming quality of giving

money to charity. And what if the taxman learned to say a little

please and thank you? There's not much to sing and dance

about as the IMF publishes yet another gloomy growth review. So,

with the celebs of the economic and political world gathering on the

slopes of Davos, chief critic Mehdi Hasan gets his skis on. With the

world chi slip sliding back into recession, do any of our political

leaders have what it takes to bring us back from the brink? Tn Oscar

nominations for The Artist, but who could have guessed a French silent

film would be such a success? Can you really pick winners within it

comes to the creative industries? Singer and actress Charlotte

Gainsbourg talks art v commerce. don't believe you have to make

Evening all. Welcome to This Week, a week when Gingrich beginning

became the front runner in the primary race by attacking the made

ya. It's an easy route to popularity which is why it's

beneath the dignity of our MPs, though best not mention it to Ed

Miliband, just in case. So sooner had Mr Gingrich taken the

lead that he promptly promised to two to Mars. Transpired he meant a

Gingrich presidency would set that as the target for a new US space

programme. And he wouldn't actually go there himself. Mitt Romney was

crest fallen, Barack Obama wore a huge grin. Back on terrafirma, it

wasn't a good weak our over overworked and underpaid workers in

Parliament. Our elected representatives were much more

exorcised by complaints that a tax subsidised starter of beetroot and

pumpkin salad consisted of only one piece of beetroot in a puddle of

pumpkin puree and was tasteless. Worse than that, a boiled egg had

been cut into quarters but only three served up on a plate. Petty

and insulting way to save a buck, said one MP. Another said, a bucket

of chips makes for soggy chips! The tower arrangement, he said, is

better. The inhumanity of it all. Suffer

the Parliamentary children with their soggy bucket of chips.

Speaking of those who deserve no sympathy whatsoever, I'm joined on

the sofa by two of Westminster's most pathetic wretches, the Oliver

Twist and Artful Dodger of late flight political chat, Michael

Portillo and Alan AJ Johnson. Welcome to your both. Michael, your

moment of the week? Well, in a week in which the Bishop's led the

assault on the welfare reforms of the Government in the House of

Lords, it was interesting to read an article by Lord Carey, a former

Archbishop of Canterbury, and he was writing I think in the Mail on

Sunday. He talked about the immorality of the high level of

borrowing. The Daily Mail actually. It's true that we are living life

on the hog today at the expense of generations that will come

afterwards because we are spending more than we produce in income so

we are borrowing. That borrowing will have to be paid for by future

general races. You referred to the trillion of national debt. Heading

for 1.5 trillion? Not many Bishops focus on the immorality of saddling

a future generation with the burden of living to the extremes that we

do at the moment. I think that is a moral question and I'm pleased that

Lord Carey mentioned it. Interesting? Mine's a light hearted

moment. Andrew Stunell, a Local Government junior minister told the

Commons they must vote against an opposition amendment. A vote was

called. There is two lobbies you have to go through, the aye and the

no lobby. Stunell was telling them to walk through the no lobby. He

then decided to nip into the aye lobby to get a glass of water, but

there's water in the no lobby as well. He went in there, got locked

in and the only way to get out was to vote, so he hid and came out

after the vote had finished. I think there's a new verb now to

walk into the wrong lobby will be Stunell-ing!

Love it. Now, it's presidential election

year in America, and President Obama was accused of class warfare

this week when he used his last State of the Union address of this

term to call on the rich to pay a bigger share of their income in tax.

With potential republican opponent and multi-millionaire Mitt Romney

forced to explain why he pays a lower tax rate than many middle

class Americans, Mr Obama obviously thinks there are votes in it. Nick

Clegg today called on his own coalition Government to do more to

reduce tax for low earners and the squeezed middle, claiming the

public had reached "boiling point" on the issue. So we turned to

writer, thinker and dreamer, Alain The prospect of paying tax is

pretty awful at any time. It's a bit like having a tooth pulled. But

in these dire economic times, it's perhaps even worse. We tend to feel

that life is already quite unfair and we don't want to have to add

another tax burden to our situation. I think that's why the Bishops

annoyed so many people when they argued that actually we had to keep

paying for the most unfortunate in society. What are these people

doing making this kind of argument in the Members of Parliament as

well? Haven't they got pulpits for this sort of thing?

I fully agree that the Bishops should stay well out of Parliament

but I think here, as in so many other areas, the secular world

could pick out some useful lessons from the religious one. When it

comes to tax, what politicians might learn is that the word "tax"

is a particularly colourless, odourless offensive word. What

religions do is rebrand tax as charity. Now, charity is a much

more appealing word and in Christianity, it's absolutely

fundamental to being a spiritual person. The idea is that Jesus

sacrificed himself for you but God gave up something very precious for

you and you in turn should practice giving up things like money that

are important to us in order to help others.

On the surface, this is a completely cray zis argument, but

it's also one that we can use, paying taxs is one of the most

generous things any of us ever gets to do, it's giving a huge share of

our income for other people, yet it feels so horrible. The challenge

for politicians is, how can we give to the act of paying taxes some of

the charm, spiritual depth and warm glow that naturally comes when you

give to charity? Paying taxes is a horrible process.

So I think this is what politicians should do. They should make us feel

that the enormous amount of money we are contributing in taxs is

actually going towards something that's pleasant, valuable and

important. They should reconnect us emotionally to the fruits of our

charity. They should show us that schools, the hip replacements, the

hospitals, the nurseries that our money has gone to fund.

They should stop making paying taxes feel like such a punishment.

And, as our parents always told us, please and thank yous are very

important and, after you've just given something really valuable,

it's always nice to get a thank you. So isn't that something that the

taxman could do for us, a little thank you slip after we've filed

our return. Alain de Botton in his North London

study. Welcome to This Week. Thank you very much. If you were on a

tight income struggling to make ends meet in these tough economic

conditions but you are paying your whack of tax, do you think a little

thank you note from the taxman's going to make you feel any better?

It's not going to solve everything but I think it helps. Charity is

something that people at all levels of society enjoy, giving to

somebody else is a fundamental sign of your freedom. That is a sign

that you are a free person. I don't have freedom not to pay tax, I make

charitable contributions, that's a freedom to make them or not to make

them, there's no choice when it comes to paying tax? Nevertheless,

I think that the act of giving tax should be in some ways acknowledged

as something that you are doing for other people, that it's not merely

a dry, bureaucratic procedure, it's an act of generosity, however

forced. Alan, up for rebranding tax as charity? When there was the

fracas over the 10p tax rate which Gordon, as Chancellor in the Blair

Government introduced, he was surprised at the backlash because,

at the same time he bought the basic rate of tax down to 20p, so

what the public should have focused their mind on was, we have got the

lowest basic rate tax ever. Instead of that, the public, which kind of

I think suggests that the public do understand about the fairness

argument, the public didn't say thuck for a 20p tax rate, the

public actually were very concerned about the very poorest losing the

10p tax rate -- didn't say thank you for the 20p tax rate. We

misrepresent the public I think when we think they they don't

understand this money going towards schools and hospitals. I don't

think you need to rebrand it. It's an interesting idea, but... In the

process of paying your tax, the forms you sent, the language that

the revenue uses, there's absolutely no acknowledgement that

this is a human process whereby one part of the population gives up

their income for the sake of another. There's absolutely nothing.

It could be just a few sentences, something to suggest that what you

are doing is not merely an about tract bureaucratic procedure, but

it's part of living in a society. Would that make tax for acceptable?

We now never think about what tax does and it does lots of good

things of which we'd be very happy about. It's about proportions, we

also think part of what we give in tax is wasted. We can see lots of

Boro cats living high on the hog or money being wasted in hospitals or

Public Services. Or IT schemes? We know that the Government thinks

that public spending is too high and it wants to bring its down. Ten

years ago, under Gordon Brown, it was 38% of our national wealth, now

it's 48%. So proportions come into it as well. Alain is right, that in

our hatred of taxation, we have perhaps forgotten that we are doing

good things with our money and it might be nice to be reminded of

that. But didn't Labour go through a huge tax and spend period after

about 2000 Stuck to Tory plans to begin with, then you really got

going and the economy was growing fast. But a lot of people just

thought that a lot of the money that was spent was wasted, that you

had taken their hard-earned money and put it into building new

schools and imbrofing hospitals and cutting waiting lists -- improving.

Because there was a lot of it, a lot was wasted. The IT scheme was a

huge problem. Most of what we did was because we were able, because

the unemployment came down and the unemployment rate went up to the

highest ever known, 75%. We weren't spending that money on ufpb

employment benefits and you could spend it on schools and hospitals -

- unemployment. It was a period when we were fortunate to be there

at that time, but actually, that was a lot to do with the policies...

The proportion of national wealth spent by the Government went up by

10%. That is... Not in the period that Andrew is talking about. It

was at 38% ten years ago. Yes, A lot of rich folk would rather

give up in charity like Bill Gates, so they can choose how to spend the

money. There is an embarrassment in Government and society about tax

because there is a feeling it is being wasted. First, there is

accountability, what tax is spent on. I would rather see a pie chart

where it says hospitals, defence and wasted money for paperclips and

bad lunch. At least I know where it is going. At the moment there is an

embarrassment, shameless secrecy. So let's open it up and have a

thank you slip along with the words like, sorry that we have wasted 32%

of your tax income, we are struggling to bring you down.

pie chart does not show that. If you say 35% has gone on health, you

do not know how much was drugs that were thrown away at the end of the

week because they over ordered. local council, when I get my local

council tax bill, it sends me a pie chart. Do you like it? I do look at

it. It does not make me feel better about paying the tax. The central

point is that with the bishops we were not talking about a great deal

of money. Welfare reform was 200 and some two 5 million of a budget,

the biggest budget that I ever had of �192 billion. As Iain Duncan

Smith says, this is not about saving money. His argument was that

it is a fairness argument. If you are very rich, as I am told you are,

very rich... All writers are rich. You would not notice paying a bit

more tax. But if you are run a little above average income at the

moment when your fuel bill has gone through the roof and food prices

have risen as well, and the tax band that you are in, you have

suddenly slipped into the next one, any more tax and you are really

struggling. Absolutely. And your pay is not keeping pace with

inflation. All that I am saying is that there should be more of an

acknowledgement on the part of governments that demand tax that

they are asking for people to do something for others, and that that

has to be remembered as part of the mix. It may go wrong and the money

may be wasted but that is fundamentally what the aspiration

of tax is, and we often forget it. It is worth bearing in mind.

Something remarkable is already beginning to happen in America,

America is going to have an election based on class. It has

never happened in recent times. Because Mr Obama, rightly or

wrongly, does think there are votes in getting the rich, or at least

the well-off, to pay more tax. think you could also say it is an

election about the size of government. They are having the

debate we ought to be having in Europe, how big a government can we

afford, what is the role of government when the going gets

tough? Obama's point is, why should a secretary pay more tax than the

millionaire she is secretary to. But the money mitt Romney is

getting on 15% has already paid 35% corporation tax. It is bound to be

a political issue. You will not get away with that in a presidential

debate. Mr Clegg claimed -- claims we have reached boiling point on

tax, and that is why he wants more tax cuts. Do you buy that? I do not

buy it in the sense that he means it. Because he is talking about

reducing taxes on the lowest paid an increasing them on the highest

paid. And I am not sure I do agree with him. Not just the lowest paid.

If you take people out of the threshold, people in the middle

benefit, too. But it does nothing for the 3 million households who do

not pay any tax. Do you think you will ever convince anybody with

this line? It is one part of what you have to do as a Government,

make tax accountable, reduce tax as much as possible, use it

efficiently, and as part of that makes you have to reconnect the

electorate to why they are paying tax. You are asking them for

something and it is a democracy so you need civic involvement in the

act of paying tax. It cannot simply be an authoritarian demand for

money, which it too often is. it may be late and we may be

shedding viewers faster than you can say Newsnight Special from

Davos, but we refuse to compromise our artistic vision here on This

Week. So coming up, actress, singer, scion of French bohemia Charlotte

Gainsbourg, who'll be talking about the tension between art and

commerce. And for those without an ounce of poetry in your bones,

remember you can post your prose on our interweb site, tweet us on your

Twitter thingumabob, or follow us on The Facebook.

Now, the PM and the Chancellor have been unusually chipper this week,

despite the grim state of the economy. Who cares about jobs or

prices when there's the prospect of a fresh dump in the Swiss Alps? And

I'm not talking about Val D'Isere. Oh, no. Call-me-Dave and Gidders

have been excitedly packing their salopettes and skis for this

weekend's international snooze-fest in Davos. So we asked The New

Statesman's in-house ski champion, Mehdi Hasan, to join them on the

black run for his round up of the Here we are in Davos, with the

great and the good of the financial world. I would be -- I thought I

would take an hour off to squeeze in some skiing, as you do. It maybe

blue skies in Davos, but there has been an avalanche of bad economic

news this week. Our GDP fell by 0.2% at the end of last year. The

IMF has revised down its UK growth forecast for 2012. And for the

first time ever, our national debt topped one trillion pounds. Can it

get any worse? Hold on, George, wait for me. Britain has

substantial economic problems and debts built up over the last 10

years. We are dealing with those, but dealing with those problems is

made more difficult by the situation in the eurozone. It suits

George Osborne to blame our economic problems on the eurozone.

Last year, he was blaming the snow and the royal wedding. Next, it

will be the dog that eight out GDP. So surely a blizzard of easier tax

lines for the Labour Party. Go on, go get him. Growth has been flat

lining in our economies since well before the eurozone crisis. In fact,

since his Spending Review in autumn 2010. And what has characterised

the Government's approach throughout this period? Total

arrogance. Well done, head, that's more like it. If only the previous

week the Labour Party had not announced it planned to keep these

cuts. Talk about mixed messages. The Government's Welfare Reform

Bill snow ploughed his way through the House of Lords with the bishops

launching an attack on the Government's �26,000 benefit cut.

It left David Cameron able to present himself as the champion of

working families, as he did on a visit to as staff. Are you happy

that your taxes are going towards families where no one is working

and they are earning over �26,000 in benefits? Is that fair? No.

again, the Labour Party is all over the place. Its message of

supporting the cap in principle but opposing it in practice has meant

that it has lacked attack climbs on the coalition. Here, for example,

is a case study in how not to do opposition. If you get your

amendment, you will tell you Lords to vote against the other amendment,

the child benefit one? I am not able to say what will happen in the

debate later. It would help if you had a policy. We would know what is

going to happen. All right, you have got me, I am a jobbing hack. I

am not in Davos, I am in Hemel Hempstead, and I cannot ski.

Opposition can be an uphill struggle, which is why it is often

left to outside parties to pick up the baton. This week, the Health

Select Committee joined doctors, nurses and midwives to denounce the

Government's health reforms. David Cameron had a ready-made answer.

think they will want to hear from this GP who hails from Doncaster.

He said this when he was the acting chairman of the Doncaster GP

commissioning group. He said, becoming one of the first national

pathfinder areas is a real boost for Doncaster. A single doctor in

Ed Miliband's constituency of Doncaster. That's all right then.

Forget that 90% of GPs want the bill dropped. Talking of drops, I

Even with the health service on its back, it still will not be enough

to save Ed Miliband on its own. He has to up his game. He has to look

-- perhaps he can look across the pond and look at the only centre-

left leader in the Western world who seems about to win an election.

Barack Obama serenading Al Green is one thing. I am not saying Ed

Miliband should start singing but he could borrow some of the

President's other lyrics. Right now, because of loopholes and shelters

in the tax code, a quarter of all millionaires pay lower tax rates

than millions of middle class households. Do we want to keep

these tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans? That is what I am

talking about, but it has taken Barack Obama three years to get his

act together. I am not sure Ed Miliband has that kind of time.

If you believe that Davos is going to save the euro, let alone the

world. -- few believe. What next? The civil war is good for the

economy, but with who? All options remain on the table, but I stress

that the importance of this policy and the reason we are pursuing it

is because we do not want to see a nuclear weapons armed Iran and

nuclear proliferation in the Middle East, but we also do not want to

see Michal -- military conflict in that region. The problem with

attacking Iran, apart from the bloodshed and the Boback, is that

oil prices could hit a record high, plunging the world economy into a

new Great Depression. -- the blow back. But it could give George

Osborne a new excuse next time the growth figures go downhill.

Mehdi Hasan at the snow centre in Hemel Hempstead. You can tear up

the letters that you were writing to complain that we had paid for

him to go to Davos! Michael, the NHS reforms. It seems to be a

loser-lose situation for the Government. Why do they persist?

suppose because they think they are the right thing to do. They think

the National Health Service has repeatedly underperformed. They

want to see it perform better. They want to see the Decisions passed

down to doctors. They want better management of budgets. They think

it is worth it. If you are making a major reform on welfare, the

biggest since the welfare state came in, major reforms on the

education front, struggling with a deficit that is not going away

easily and tough economic times, do you also want to be doing the

biggest reform of the health service since it came in? This is a

very interesting point. He said with a wry smile. I absolutely did

not predict this. Half the Tory party did not. When I was writing

about what the Tory party might do two years ago, said they would

tackle the deficit, tackles secondary education but leave

health a side because it is too controversial. To my surprise, they

have tackled it as well. I suppose they feel that there are so many

things they want to... They are going to be quite unpopular, so

they might as well prepared -- Health is a good issue for Labour

and a tough one for the Government. It is the other way on welfare.

Labour is struggling to get the clear message on welfare reform.

don't think so. A lot of what Iain Duncan Smith is doing our the

reforms that we would introduce as well. On this issue, I think there

is a very strong feeling that �26,000, the average wage of

�35,000, should be the most that someone on benefits can earn. The

problem is in the detail. Iain Duncan Smith says there will be a

transition period. The peers were pointing out, Labour peers as well,

it is that if you are not careful in the Government's own impact

assessment you will find lots of people presenting themselves as

homeless as a result. Local authorities have to pay tax payers

money and it ends up being more expensive. The Government could not

give assurances about what those transition arrangements could be.

On the other issue, child benefit, they were pointing out that someone

on 80,000 a year would have child benefit but someone on 26,000 a

year would not. You would get 26,000 a year if you had no kids

and 26,000 a year if you had four kids. And so the effect on child

poverty. Important points to debate. But what you have said on the cap

is a perfectly realistic position. It is not what I have been able to

get any official Labour spokesperson to say. You say that

you accept the cap and think 26,000 is about right for the cap, but you

are going to be very careful to make sure the transition

arrangements are right. Yes. Your party has not said that. That is

the position of Liam Byrne. I have interviewed people this week and

I didn't see your interviews, but we were reforming welfare, it's a

long hard slog, but we were doing it. Well, the fact is though that

Labour could have gone much further, they didn't, and this Government

is? Yes, I mean Alan said a moment ago you have got to be careful not

to do this, that and the other. One thing you have got to be kaifl of

is that people will propose all sorts of transitional arrangements,

you have to make sure you don't lose all the reform. One Government

after another has tried to control the size of the welfare budget, has

tried to control for instance the numbers of people claiming benefits

that are intended for disabled people. One Government after

another's made no impact in the welfare budget. Do you think we

will see, because we have got the universal credit coming down in

2013, these changes on the cap coming in in 2013 as well, there's

also other changes involving various disability allowances and

so on. Will we see, by 2015, will a very different welfare system have

started to take route? I think this is the most comprehensive effort by

a Government that I can recall but I expect the results to be

disappointing. I don't think so. Look, the numbers of people on

Incapacity Benefit went up from 700,000 up to 2.6 million from the

70s to the 90s. To get that down, not just stopping the flow but also

looking at the stock in those terms, many of whom wanted to go back to

work, they need ed help and counselling. That's a long, hard

process, we started it. We stopped the flow, it would have been four

million if that ratio carried on much longer. We stopped the flow

and then you need to get to work with the many individual families.

65,000 are affected by this �26,000 budget. Iain Duncan Smith says, and

I think it's right, that if you concentrate on each one on their

circumstances, you can use the year leading up to this taking effect to

actually find what the problem is, you can work with Louise Casey and

her family intervention project to try to solve the problems. What you

don't do in doing all this is to hit familys that are in real

difficultty, the guy who's 59, four kids, worked all his life, had a

stroke, can't work, a quarter of these people affected by the cap

cannot work by the Government's definition. The public want the

shameless sorting out, the Shameless TV series, they want

those people sorting out, they don't want to hit people genuinely

in need of the benefits and that's the difficulty of how you have to

get this right. There have been huge changes over the years and I

think Iain Duncan Smith has carried on many of those and has to be

careful he doesn't defeat his own objective. The economy, more bad

news, the fourth quarter of last year. The economy declined, the

eurozone crisis back in the head luens again this week. The Greek

situation still unresolved -- headlines. The IMF Chief Economist

downgrading Britain's growth rate for this year. It was said that the

UK should consider slowing the speed of the cuts to avoid

strangling the recovery? What did you make of that? Well, it's

perfectly plausible an argument but I don't think it's the argument

that the markets accept. I mean, the pace of the austerity programme

which was agreed by the coalition in the 72 hours following the last

general election is dictated by their view of what the markets will

put up with. They believe that only the acceleration of the austerity

package by comparison with what Gordon Brown was pursuing has

entkwrabled us to continue to finance our debt at very low rates

of interest -- enabled us, and to be able to print money without

affecting that. I think we are all on tenterhooks as to whether the

markets might one day turn against Britain and say no, you are not

going to pay 2%, but 5 or 6%. The difference for us between able to

finance 2% or 5 and 6% is huge, it's the difference between a

controllable situation and a calamity. It's all very well

someone from the IMF saying you ought to change your austerity

programme, I don't think any politician will take that risk in

the markets. I was interviewed Liam Byrne, your friend, and it seems to

be an endorsement of Labour's position in a way, but within a few

hours, Christine Lagarde said the opposite. You can't win? Christine

Lagarde's looking for the UK Government to pony up a lot of

money to the IMF. She is indeed. North-east not about to upset them.

Michael and I represent a real difference in this. I was in

Government at the time of the 2010 election when things were going

pear-shaped, when it looked like we wouldn't get what the outcome was a

hung Parliament. The markets weren't panicking, they weren't

panicking about what was a G20 policy. They put us on negative

credit watch and we were paying yield similar to Italy? Look, at

the time, halfing the deficit within four years was a plan that

didn't send the markets into panic. You look at the non-where are EU

countries, you'll see that their growth, all of it, was better than

the UK this year and all bar Hungary is going to be next year.

If you look at countries that control their own economies, the US,

Switzerland, the non-EU countries. Sweden? Yes. You look at those

countries, you will see that their yields are lower than the UK's.

going to have to stop you there. I'm check my gild yields now. Nick

Clegg appointed as Deputy Prime Minister, Ed Miliband in charge of

the Labour Party, Diane Abbott leading the fight against fried

chicken. Yes, it's a funny old world, isn't it. A hat trick of the

unlikely and the unwise and the unpredictable. But predicting the

future is notoriously tricky. So no sooner had Dave Titanic Cameron

called on filmmakers to make more commercially successful movies than

a black-and-white French film with hardly any dialogue received ten

Oscar nominations. Is it really wise to ask for that. We decided to

put art v commerce in this week's spotlight.

This morning, we'll share the news we've all been waiting for. Hugo.

Hugo. The Descendants The Artist. It's that time again when Holyrood

prepares to polish the statues. Surprisingly, with a silent French

film proving to be a cut above the rest. The Prime Minister toured

Pinewood Studios recently and urged British film producers to focus on

making films that made a profit, rather than an artistic statement

and was backed by one of the toasts of Tinsel Town. I have been

critical of the idea that all public money should go into

minority rather obscure films. I think that it's in the interests of

the industry and indeed the public that we start building up and

making more films that people want to see.

Can you really predict a box office hit? Should politician bs in the

business of telling artists to pick winners? Perhaps we should leave it

up to the audience to decide whether art is commerce -- art

beats commerce. We are joined by artist, actor, singer, Charlotte

Gainsbourg. Welcome to This Week. Would you ever compromise artistic

values to make a bit more money? course. No, I was lucky enough not

to have to make compromises in my choices and so, but I feel very

lucky that way. But if what you did was listened to by a lot more

people because it was more commercial or watched by a lot more

people in the movies, wouldn't a little compromise be worth it if

you could reach out further? No, I think what I'm hoping to do is to

be able to go from one maybe obscure film to another one that'll

meet Australian add Jens and then go back to something more obscure -

- meet audience and then go back to something more. So a bit of both?

Yes. It's very hard to know whether a film will be a success or not, so

so you never know, even with very commercial films sometimes they're

very big flops. And millions spent on them as well, whereas sometimes

movies with a pittance spent on them can be very successful?

Exactly. As politicians, rather than artists, your life is

compromised, isn't it? I dare say it is, but can I come to the point

what the Prime Minister said. I think he's absolutely wrong. I'm so

upset with British cinema which trades on nostalgia and makes safe

cosy little films which make money, Love Actually, the King's Speech.

You didn't like The King's Speech? It's cosy, safe and unambitious. I

look at my other homeland, Spain and it's so risky, it's so edgy,

it's so original and I think that British cinema just looks very pale

by comparison. For the Prime Minister to commit us to continue

to make this sort of cosy, British archetypal stuff is very, very sad.

He was only giving an opinion, he can't tell us what movies to make.

Would you like to join this attack or come to the defence of the

British movie industry? I would join the attack. Really? The French

make a lot more art house movies? Yes, and if we didn't have any help

from the Government, I think the industry would have ended like, I

don't know if it's the same, but as the Italian cinema. The Italian

industry. I think we are very lucky to have that Government help.

But you could say that if the taxpayer needs to subsidise the

making of these films, it's only because so few people want to watch

them, they need Government money? Well, I share the incredulity about

David Cameron, you know, getting involved. There's an issue about

the film industry. Lord Smith's just done a very good report.

former Cabinet league? Chris Smith, about the practical help you can

give to the film industry. You say that he was only offering an

opinion, but it's the opinion of the Prime Minister of this country

suggesting that somehow our taste is just Downton Abbey. There's been

taxpayers' money thrown into the industry to make movies that not

only they didn't even make it as flops on the screen, they didn't

make it straight to video? That's because they're bad, it's not

because they're risque or original or avant-garde. We want good movies

which also take risks. A French film actress once said to me she

was fed up with the French house plots because they are the same as

Christine sleeps with Paul, Paul then sleeps with Marie, they all

sleep together then all go out to dinner, that's the normal plot in a

French movey? Of course, but it's great to have... Sounds like a

Carry On film. It's great to have the boring films maybe but also

commercial films at the same time. We do achieve that in France, we've

had great successes of non-big budget films that were big

successes. Across the world? Yes. suppose as a singer you have more

artistic control compared to a movie, you can choose what you

really want to do? Well, yes, I'm sort of in command. I can go

wherever I want, well, I've liked to collaborate with other people so

mainly they did the work, but with a film I love to be under the

command of a director, it's completely different. You can go

wherever you want but glad you time to This Week tonight. Thank you.

That is your lot but not for us. It's Beach VolleyBall at Annabel's

sponsored by Blue Nun and Alan and Michael have volunteered to be

ballboys. We await news from Whitehall's infamous honours for

feature committee, a previously sloth-like beast that's been