13/06/2013 This Week

of effort. I am not so easily impressed as Diane Abbott. American

whistleblower, Edward Snowden, has been a naughty boy and could be

facing the cane for divulging national secrets. Emily make less

delivers her report card. I was going to tell you what I was

thinking but I thought I would write it in an e-mail and you will

probably get to hear it quicker that way. Protesting outside the school

gates, what is the most effective form of protest? Johnson Sun is

handing out the gold stars. I seem to have covered every protest

movement since the peasant revolt, when history was current affairs.

But now it is time for the this week protest. White Acra come out from

behind the bike shed. Evenin' all. Welcome to This Week.

And we begin with an apology to any viewers who have stumbled across

tonight's show by accident. Because we can only imagine your confusion

that in a time of ever deeper cuts and eye-watering belt-tightening,

the Government has not followed this week's Greek example and pulled the

plug on its bloated state broadcaster. How we have survived

when spare bedrooms and disability benefits have been sacrificed on the

alter of austerity remains a mystery not just to us but to any licence

fee-payer still awake at 11.35 at night. The Greek government

justified its cost-cutting by claiming their publicly-funded

broadcaster symbolised "an exceptional lack of transparency and

incredible extravagance. This ends now". Which is a bit like the way

the BBC disposes of senior executives. So spare a thought for

those Greeks who have already suffered so much but who can no

longer enjoy the best television their nation has to offer and must

wave goodbye to The Only Way Is Athens, Later with Nana Mouskouri,

The Great Greek Moussaka-Off, Much Later with Nana Mouskouri, Two Pints

of Ouzo and a Packet of Green Olives, Too Late for Nana Mouskouri

and the big Saturday night favourite, Strictly Come Plate

Smashing. Not to mention the inconsolable fans of Michael

Portillo, whose latest series, Great Greek Donkey Journeys, has now been

cancelled. Although that doesn't exactly sound like a tragedy, Greek

or otherwise. Speaking of those who would wither and die without public

support, I'm joined tonight by two lovebirds whose romance isn't built

to last. Think of them as the Jay Rutland and Tamara Ecclestone of

late night political chat. I speak, of course, of #sadmaninajag John

"Prezza" Prescott. And #sadmanonatrain Michael "Choo Choo"

Portillo. Your moment of the week? Two moments. One, the government

thought it had devised a league table of doctors, surgeons,

operating, so the public could see who was killing off patients. But it

turns out that surgeons are able to opt out at will. The other is that

another �2 million of gagging orders have appeared in the national health

service, even though Sir David Nicholson recently appeared at a

Commons committee and said he knew nothing about these things. These

are orders given to members of staff who are leaving who probably have

things to say about patient safety but whose silence is bought by

taxpayer's money. It is beyond Orwellian that the NHS seems to have

lost its way at least in part in providing service to the public and

uses taxpayer's money, intended for the care of patients, to silence

people who might tell us what was going on. You could say it was hands

of producer interest. At the beginning of the week, Cameron was

talking about going to the G8 and dealing with tax avoidance and

multinationals. And today, the launching of a Royal Princess ship,

that has been done by the Royal Princess, is it, the Duchess of

Cambridge, I get the title is wrong. In that sense, two, but what is the

connecting? Bermuda, one of our depending islands where the

government appoints the Prime Minister, one of the tax avoidance

has now said he is not prepared to agree with Cameron. He has lost

authority in Parliament, lost in the areas of dependence. They appoint

the leader of the majority, and that person becomes the Prime Minister

and appoints his own cabinet. like written. You could say that but

he has lost the authority in Parliament and here is Bermuda, the

Prime Minister appointed by this government, giving him that. I don't

know what that is, but it sounds painful!

Now, you may have noticed Michael's not looking his normal chipper self.

And I don't blame him. There he was, thinking his old school paramour

Diane still held a torch for him, even though her, um, high-flying

career has since put a stop to their weekly sofa snuggles. But now

there's a new Tory in town, with Education Secretary, Michael Gove,

declaring his love for Diane, after she'd whispered sweet nothings in

his ear about his GCSE reforms. For God's sake, you two, get a room!

Some folks, of course, would prefer to pass the sick bucket when it

comes to public displays of affection for Mr Gove. So here's

journalist and education activist, Fiona Millar with her take of the

Gove. Actually, it is very hard because I think he is one of the

worst education secretaries we have had for a long time. This week come

he unveiled plans for qualification reform, and if you believe the hype

it is more back to basics, traditional values, not quite chalk

and slake boards, but not far off. He claims that his no coursework

final exam GCSEs will end dumbing down and grade inflation and restore

eager to the classroom. But if I was marking this piece of work, I would

give him a big F for fail. For starters, changing the nature of

exams does not necessarily mean standards will be raised. That is

more to do with teaching and learning, and these reforms may be

setting more children to fail. Raising the bar in the high jump

does not necessarily mean everybody will be able to jump over it. Exams

are great for some young people, especially if they thrive on memory

and recall testing, but they are not right for everybody, which is why we

still need teacher assessment and extended project work, which is,

after all, what happens at Gove's plans are not really radical

reform. They are just tinkering with a redundant system, which is why

everyone, from the head of Eton, to the CBI, are questioning whether we

need this high-stakes testing at 16, especially when so many young people

are going to be staying on in education and training for two more

years. So, if you want to be a true revolutionary, Michael Gove, you

will cut GCSEs and support the idea of a real English baccalaureate that

includes academic and vocational achievement and values things like

personal development. This could match the International

baccalaureate, which nobody describes as woolly or dumbed down.

Only then will our children thrive, flourish and compete on the

international stage. From a classroom in London to our

own little classroom in Westminster. Welcome back. You have made clear

you do not like the exam reforms Michael Gove is bringing in. But do

you agree that the present system fails too many children? I think it

would be does and it does need to be reformed. Dash-macro it probably

does. There is this problem of perverse incentives for schools to

behave in certain ways. They focus on certain groups of children at the

expense of other groups, and it is not a system that works well for

everybody, I don't think. What did you make of the Ofsted research

which found that schools were failing to nurture the brightest

kids? That is partly a product of the way performance tables work,

because they played to the middle. If you ask them to play to a

different group, somebody else will suffer. That is one of the problems,

which is partly why I think winning fewer exams and to focus more on

education, rather than the testing. -- why we need to have fewer exams.

There were a lot of exams when I was at school. This is the first time in

ten years when none of my children are doing exams. It starts in year

nine, ten, and everybody is getting them in for early entry to boost

their league table positions. I question whether it is an education,

or whether... The CBI have called it an exam treadmill, and I think that

is what it is. What do you make of the case that Michael Gove is trying

to take us back to a bygone era? do not buy that, although I have

disagreed with Fiona less than I thought I was going to. I had come

prepared to disagree with her more. I had to make him leave his guns

outside the studio! Michael Gove said we had the devaluation and the

inflation of grades which had flattered children. I think it is

true that what children are being asked at the moment is not demanding

enough, to read bits of works are not the whole thing, bits of plays,

not the whole play, writing short uses of work rather than essays. It

is not demanding enough. Although we used to do these things in the old

days, that does not mean it is wrong. It worked rather well. Where

I think Fiona is right is that there is something illogical about the

present system, which is to examine children at the age of 16 in a

fairly academic way. Then they stay on for two years and not all of them

will do A-levels and go to university. What happens to the fag

end of their education beyond GCSE. More and more, I am attracted to the

idea that the proper break point in education is about 14, at which .1

group will be going on to academic education but another group may be

going on to arts and drama. More vocational. Not just vocational.

Some of it will be hand skills, but some of it will be things like

media, arts and crafts and so on. Children are different, and at some

point you're going to have to provide them with different

institutions of education, of equal status but leading to different

aims. The aged at which to do that is not 11, as it used to be, nor 16,

as the GCSE would propose. John, do you agree with Diane Abbott, your

sister in the Labour Party? sister? I think he means comrades.

They have given that up. She is one of your sisters in the Labour Party.

Brotherly love. Do you agree that rigorous educational qualifications

are even more important for kids from working-class backgrounds who

do not have any other advantage? are a -- faced with the question

Fiona has given us. The argument that goes on in the comprehends it

is. To listen to someone today talking about this report was almost

dumbing down the whole contents of education. But I also fear that the

argument about going for the brightest or not, it is the old

argument of streaming, which was at the heart of comprehensive

education. Can you deal with them all? What is the answer to my West

German? I am not only responding to you, because you are not the only

one here. I think the emphasis on examination is too far. I think it

should be more about education. Diane was talking about, let's make

sure we get bright kids brighter, using the tag of working class. She

did not put her kids into the working-class education. We are

talking about state education, not the private one. Her point, if I can

get you to address it, which may be a mission too far. Her point was

that, if you come into life with very few advantages, you don't have

parents with lot of books at home, you haven't got social capital, you

haven't got contacts in the right places, a rigorous exam

qualification is even more important to you as an ordinary working class

kid than it is to the middle class? I'm asking if you agree or disagree?

No, no, no. The achievement is important. I found in my own area

where we had the comprehensive argument in Hull found teachers were

more concerned at doing the broad education instead of guaranteeing

the fact that a working class kid should be able to get an A-level

opportunity. What did you make of Diane's intervention? I don't think

exams equate with the rigorous education necessarily. We ought to

be talking about the education. There are in forms of assessment and

should be all rigorous. We should talk about what goes on in the

classroom. But Diane's point is, unless you have a rigorous exam, the

person from the working class background cannot demonstrate he or

she has achieved a rigorous standard. Nobody's arguing against

rigorous exams. My point is that they are not enough on their own.

You need different forms of assessment and they are not right

for every child and you don't need the high range of tests at 16. You

need a final qualification at 18. I'm not arguing against rigour.

is arguing against rigour? I don't know any teachers saying that.

glad you said that. The argument against rigour has driven out

education for the last 40 years. people sit down and say let's

created a dumb down system? They do. They sit down and say they shouldn't

be given aspirations beyond their capability. That's absolute rubbish.

That's what the Ofsted report says today. It showed that certain groups

of childrenlet haven't been stretches as much as they should

have been. They've been asked by your Government and my Government to

focus on a particular group of pupils. That's what they've done.

Very successfully. The certain group is the brightest group and it's in

about 70 or 80% of schools. A big group. The incentive put before

schools has been to focus on this borderline group. That's what

they've done very well. That's what's happened. Some have suffered

as a result of that. We need a system that allows all children to

progress at the appropriate rate. Let's take it for granted you don't

like the school's policy from either side. Can you tell us what Labour's

school boy sill is? I haven't a clue and I would like them to adopt

something like this final qualification which is what happens

in most places in the world. They have a graduation system at 18, not

16. The argument was, let's have new buildings, that's what Labour did.

We built wonderful comprehensives but did nothing about the education

inside them. We had secondary modern school children alongside the

grammar schools and the teachers corn traited on the brighter ones.

School respect like that now. have run out of time on this. Is

Michael Gove a pevential future leader of the Conservatives?

course. He is. -- a potential future lead of the Conservatives? Labour

will be in power for many years. Thank you for coming on. It's so

late that so many with a grudge against The One Show are going to

turn up here at any moment. Stick with us because waiting in the wings

ready to liberate our studio from the television Taliban, the BBC's

World Affairs Editor, John Simpson. He's here to talk about the power of

protest. Don't forget, if you would like to be spied on by the US

national security agency, you can always follow us opt Twitter,

Fleecebook and totally unsecure everybody can see what you are

looking at interweb. We all like to keep secrets, like John Simpson

drives a pink Honda Jazz or that Michael's quiff is great. How much

does the world know about you? One former intelligence contractor

hasiblied the whistle and accused the US Government of systematically

receiving phone and web data. We are on the story and so is the BBC's

Emily Maitlis. This is a round-up of It's Andrew Neil. We said we'd never

speak again. But I need you. I need you. This Week is the gnawings's

most powerful political intelligence-gathering operation and

the free world depends on you saying yes. You owe your country this much.

Andrew, how could you? You promised. I've made a new life for myself now

and I've got a wife and kids. I've started again in Kensal Rise. I mean

Chile. Please... Don't let me do this. I'll through in a bottle of

Blue Nun. OK then, but make sure I wonder what Wordsworth would have

made of the cloud of 2013? Hardly lonely but stuffed with a gazillion

bits of information about all of us pretty much all of the time, telling

the State exactly what it needs to know.

One man dvent much like the sound of that. Edward snowden created what

whistleblowers before him called the most important disclosure of

all-time -- one man didn't like that. He told the public what most

of us feared but didn't want to believe, that every step of the way

is being monitored by big Government and even bigger business. It could

be rendered by the CIA, I could have people coming after me or their

third parties, they work closely with other nations, or they could

pay off the tri-Yads. What makes a man do that? Even a pole-dancing

girlfriend who was foolish enough to say before all this happened that

life felt a little boring, wasn't enough to talk him down. All this

put a lot of pressure on the UK. Had any laws been circumvented? I wish

to be absolutely clear that this accusation is baseless. Any data

obtained by us from the United States involving UK nationals is

subject to proper UK statutory controls and safeguards.

It's funny how often people say if you are not guilty you have got

nothing to worry about. Bit like that chestnut, don't put anything in

an e-mail that you wouldn't want to see on the frovent Daily Mail. I'm

pretty confident I've never put anything in an e-mail that I've

wanted to see on the front of the Daily Mail. But it misses the point.

In this day and age, our virtual identity is as real as our physical

presence, it's just who we are. You really want to get the true

picture of a story, you need a high vantage point.

The police made swift work of arresting one agent provocateur

raising his safe house for a group of G8 protesters. The PM was

preparing to steam forth to use a Starbucks analogy to the G8 next

week to save the world from tax avoiders. It's that pesky little

word "aggressive" that creates complications. Is an ISA aggressive?

Al Gore, probably not. Is duty-free perfume aggressive? Grrr. Just

doesn't feel right does it? What point does the Chancellor really

think you are going a bit too far? It's this Government that's putting

aggressive tax avoidance at the heart of the G8 agenda and what do

we hear this week from the Labour Party? They give tax avoidness

advice to donors. That is what they have been doing. �700,000 of tax

avoided because of what Labour advised their donor to do. So let me

challenge them. Will you give the money back? Talking of giving back

the money, have you ever paused to wonder what by mutual agreement

sounds like? Does it, for example, sound luke this. It should be led by

someone who sees it as a beginning or not as an end. Or perhaps this.

I'm content with the board's perspective on this. There's no

fight or anything like this. Or even this. I hope that I will leave RBS a

lot better than I found it. City fennel Hester insists he wasn't

pushed but neither were his hands glued to the desk. He leaves RBS

half way through the process, a job half done -- Stephen Hester. He

takes with him some �4. 5 million. What he won't take any more is the

public outrage over whether or not he should be allowed to keep it.

Of course, you don't need on I havisation at GCHQ when you have the

GCSE to confuse you, sorry, that should have read E-bacc, dieback,

sorry, what? Does he agree with me that an emphasis on core academics

is not argued contrary to the interest of black minority ethnic

children? The honourable lady's absolutely right. I'm in love.

And as we speak, there are hearts being carved into the green benches

of the Commons with a pen knife, but, beware, the honey trap, Mr

Gove. Anyway that,'s me, done, signing out. Over and out. Or, as we

say in the spy business, Roger. I mean, Andrew.

She gave away my codename! Emily mately on assignment deep under

cover. You never know when we might see her again. Miranda Greening.

Welcome back. Hello.This story on the prism and the US authorities

working with the British authorities on looking at our commune cautions,

it seems to be dwieeding us. People think it's important or they don't

give a damn. Which side are you on? I think it's really important but I

think there is a kind of long-term inevitability that everything that

we put on e-mail and Twitter and everything else, Facebook, will be

kept and accessible. It's clearly happening in the United substitutes

and sooner or later, the Government will bring forward a communications

Bill and get it through. It's not the same as accessing data but it's

the same as keeping it. John? it very difficult to answer it. I

don't like the idea that everything we are doing... I don't do e-mails

anyway. You do social media.That's right and they can pick that up and

that's pretty open really. That is about the social media, everybody's

reading it and dealing with it. It's a question about Governments getting

the intelligence and the kind of technology to be automobile to copy

everything. That's got to make you feel uneasy and you have got to

really try and deal with the difficulty of controlling in some

form, perhaps controlling's not the word, but saying to those doing it,

you can only do certain things, not just saying to us, don't do the

e-mail and they won't be able to copy it, so I find it a dilemma.

It's almost inevitable this process of connection is going to continue.

That's why we went partly for the Freedom of Information Bill. Even

that's more limited frankly. Blair says he now regrets that.

Miranda? The thing is, when the Internet started, it was a sort of

libertarian fantasy, wasn't it, this idea that there was a parallel world

in which there were no rules o everything Government. What we have

realised is that what happens on the Internet has a real effect on the

real world so there has to be rules brought in. However, in America,

obviously, this is principally something that's been happening

through the US security system. They have very authoritarian security and

a slightly paranoia mindset about Government being against you as an

individual. We need to be careful in the UK not to import that poll arty

because there has to be a sensible way. Fuad up the things the Obama

administration's done, if this would have been Bush, there would have

been outcry. The harassment, the rounding up limb of the Associated

Press journalists and the horizon, I mean I'm a horizon subscriber in New

York, everyone's there and they get their records. Now there's the

suggestion, we have not seen evidence, but the suggestion that

they can go on any expedition they want from all the major Internet

service providers is remarkable. President Obama refuses to engage

with the subject and says, it would be interesting to have a national

debate about it. And sending drones everywhere at the same time.

Absolutely. Reading the intelligence reports about Iraq, you couldn't

believe them. It was all can chitchat about what somebody told

somebody else. We made decisions about Iraq based on intelligence

that frankly wasn't really acceptable. There is a fundamental

problem, isn't there, Michael, that the changing nature of terrorism

which we saw with our own 7/7 and in Boston and we even saw again with

this attempt to blow up the EDL rally. Rather than the plots now

being done in far away caves, you can monitor people going back and

forward to strange parts in Tora Bora, they are all sitting in back

kitchens in this country and plotting on social media? The most

persuasive way of putting it is that if annencest incident, a bombing has

occurred, a terrible one, and there's a group involved, and they

plotted the thing on social made ya, on the Internet or whatever, but you

didn't pick it up before, if that day that's been kept, you can go

back and trace what was happening and possibly avoid the next

catastrophe. If all that's been destroyed by the companies, that the

Government has no possibility of going back and looking at the data,

because it wasn't kept, and that is, in this country anyway what the

Government is proposing, that all Secretaries say we need to get on

with this bill. I can go back to when we were talking about bringing

in the cameras, and people were complaining. Most people who have

seen it used in criminal situations, difficult ones, where

you pick up the picture and the prosecution comes from that camera.

Public opinion is now much more disposed to accepting the cameras,

from which there are picked is available, and not so hostile.

the use of data, it is fear, isn't it, because there were previous

powers used while local councils for strange purposes. Whether you were

in the right catchment area for schools. There have to be safeguards

as to how the new laws are replies -- applied to protect people.

this report on the Lib Dem party, and it is a pretty damning report on

sexual harassment in the Lib Dem party. Do you recognise it? Has this

been your experience? Have you known that this has been going on? It has

not been my experience at all. you known of other colleagues,

friends, who have been victims of it? I have not, to be honest, but

this report has looked at a lot of examples over 20 years, and it has

led to very clear recommendations about how to turn a party which was

until recently a very small party into odd an organisation with proper

procedures to protect people from things like bullying and harassment.

You were very worried about Nick Clegg's was issued on this. You

thought he was in grave peril over this. -- his position on this.

people were very unhappy about how the hierarchy dealt with problems in

the ranks, particularly in the relationship between staff and

volunteers, etc. Low level is the phrase, which is hard to pin down.

Very much so. I assume people in the Conservatives and the Labour Party

are happy that this has happened to the Liberal Democrat party because

there will be lessons from -- for everyone in politics from this. It

is hard to turn these things into organisations which take

responsibility is to start seriously in this area. Mick Clegg has said he

will take the recommendations on board immediately. -- Nick Clegg.

has no choice. Absolutely. She has said it was haphazard and there was

no conspiracy or cover-up. It has not made that much of an impact. It

has not been massive news. A quick question for you, John, on your

leader. Has he gone through a rough patch at the moment? We are going

through a change and challenging traditional thinking in the Labour

Party, universe a la tea being one. Are we ditching it, or making

adjustments and changes? Ed Miliband has now come out and said, I want to

say this. He will get himself in a lot of trouble, and the same with

the referendum on Europe. But he is making decisions. We are going

through the process of change from a man who was originally saying, tell

me what you want, to making decisions as leader and getting on

with it, and the difficulties in a political party saying some of the

things that he is. What did you make of Stephen Hester's departure from

RBS? Anyone who works for an organisation 82% owned by the

government needs his head testing, because it always ends like this. He

was told on the one hand to get RBS back to robust health as quickly as

possible, and on the other hand was being told RBS must lend to people

nobody else is willing to lend to. These things are incompatible and

not surprisingly, eventually he has torn off his own head. And he only

has �5 million to put it back on! And he is assuring us that the bank

is getting back to normal business, that is what worries me. The fact

that he has gone today and �1.5 billion has come off the share

price, I would remind you that many small people own those shares they

have gone down today because he has gone. The British people own them.

Now, we're always ready to man the barricades here on This Week. No-one

more so than Choo Choo, who's spent the past week showing his support

for the overheated train drivers of Sweden by joining them in their

skirt-wearing protest. His sartorial choices have always caused a stir in

the This Week office, though we still need some convincing that a

blue and yellow puffball is quite what the Swedish train drivers had

in mind. So what is the most effective form of protest, beyond

Michael getting his pins out? We decided to find out and put protest

in this week's Spotlight. As Nelson Mandela's health continues

to be a cause for concern, the world holds its breath for a man who

showed that the most effective form of protest can also be the most

dignified. Peaceful protest in Istanbul has spiralled into

nationwide demonstrations against the elected Turkish government,

proving that people power is still a force to be reckoned with, even in a

democracy. In the UK, anti-capitalist 's clashed violently

with police, as raids on organised activists were carried out ahead of

next week's G8 meeting. So what is the best way to get your voice heard

if you feel you are not being listened to? Caroline Lucas tried to

make yourself heard this week, proving that you do not need a mob

to make a powerful point. Parliament has ruled that you can say what you

think, but not wear what you think. It left the Green party MP looking

bemused. I was going to say it strikes me as an irony that this

T-shirt is regarded as an inappropriate thing to wearing this

house, whereas apparently it is appropriate for this kind of

newspaper to be available to buy in eight different outlets on the

Palace of Westminster estate. May be actions speak louder than

words, without I rate violin player proving that button may not have

much talent, but it still knows who deserves to have an excellent at

to resist. John Simpson is with us. Nice to be here. Let's begin with

the protest in Turkey. For most of us, it is hard to know what it is

about and what success would mean for the protesters. It is supposed

to be about gardens and parks and things. But, of course, it is not. I

am sorry about my voice. Not at all. When you have big issues going on in

a country, in this case and Islamist, moderate Islamist, who

seems to be pushing Turkey away from the old ways that it has had ever

since the 1920s, then it is these things that tend to come out. The

trouble is, the demonstrators have done rather well in keeping

ongoing. And, of course, the cops have put themselves completely

beyond the pale by doing all the wrong things and squirting tear gas

at young women. The picture of the Lady in red. Beautiful, and behaved

in a very dignified way. Exactly the wrong thing to do. I am right in

thinking that not all of the most iconic protests, the most famous

ones in modern times, are actually successful. I was thinking of

Tiananmen Square, which was not successful. If you are willing, as a

government, to use absolute ultimate Force and just mow down people in

their hundreds, as happened there, then you are going to probably win.

It is all a matter of who has the moral advantage, really. What you

need to do is constant, if you are a demonstrator, you have to constantly

try to egg on the cock 's, to behave badly. Because then public opinion

shifts. -- the police. If you are the one who behaves badly, forget

it, especially in this country, where any kind of violence is

regarded as an advertisement that you are doing the wrong thing,

self-defeating. Whereas in France, for instance, that fantastic moment

which makes everybody's heart beat faster, when somebody turns up at

the demo and he has got a crowbar, and he prizes up a cobblestone,

lifts it up. That puts him in the direct line down from the French

Revolution. And he is on the side of French history. If they used Ta

Macon the roads in France, no more protest. In a sense, what you are

saying is that for protest to work, to be successful, the people they

are up against should not be too ruthless. For example, Mr Gorbachev,

when the protests broke out in Eastern Europe, a more ruthless

ruler would have sent in the tanks. Gorbachev would not do that. When

the British were faced with Gandhi, if he had been against the Nazis, he

would not have lasted as long. is true. There is a balance between

the Force you can use and the force that people are prepared to use

against you. At the trouble is, I was thinking a moment ago, who has

been successful? Well, in the short run, not an awful lot of these

protest movements have been. You are right, in India it certainly was.

But China is a very good example. want, moderate is a good word, they

will be pretty tough, if the result does not go the way they want it to

go, the way they think it ought to go. Do protests in this country have

a real impact on the government? Putting aside Margaret Thatcher, I

always got the impression that the poll tax riots in Trafalgar Square

in particular on our TV on that night, had quite a shaking effect on

the government at the time. But I am from the outside. You were inside.

In that case, it was a combination, as with most revolutions, of

different interests coming together. What really shook Margaret

Thatcher and brought her down was not protest in Trafalgar Square but

Conservative members of Parliament who did used they would lose their

seats over the issue and decided to get rid of her. Thinking about

revolutions, protests more generally, what happens again and

again is that the initial protest might succeed in dislodging an

administration, because it loses its nerve, but that is only the first

phase. The French Revolution went to lots of different phases. The

Russian Revolution went through lots of phases. The recent ones in Libya

and Egypt have gone through different phases, so you never know

who the ultimate victor will be. has such a mild mannered chap like

yourself been the photos -- the focus of so many protests? Can I

follow what has been said? Johns said you do not win, but you do.

Tiananmen Square, the hardliners may have pushed at Tiananmen Square but

it brought forward another leadership to avoid that. I was in

semen's strikes, and we used to lose every time but it changed the

management. You make changes in the long run and that is what is

important about protest. It seems to me that what John says is absolutely

right. In the long run. But I will tell you the best protest I ever saw

was in Prague in 1989. We had all the different ways of ending Soviet

control in Eastern Europe. But what happened in Prague was that people

just went out in a stolid way, and they stood there and protested and

the police did not know what to do. They would come back the next night

until finally, that rotten, horrible old system did not know what to do

so they went home. Not one window was broken. Magnificent.

That's your lot for tonight folks. But not for us, because it's

Desperate Divorcees night at Annabel's, and Wendy Deng's put a

few quid behind the bar to let us all toast her divorce from Rupert

Murdoch. I'm told the woman who took her Nigerian husband to the cleaners

in the courts this week will also be there. So I don't think we men will

have to put our hands in our pockets. But we leave you tonight

with news that Mrs Speaker, Silly Bercow, now facing a hefty legal

bill, following her Twitter court case with Alastair McAlpine, has