14/11/2013 This Week

Tonight, This Week heads into the Westminster jungle. Political big

beast John Major causes a rumble, claiming there are too many posh

boys in Britain's top jobs. Celebrity classics professor Mary

Beard has taken up the Dingo Dollar Challenge. I flirted with eye muscle

to, get me out of here. To be honest, I think going on this week

was humiliation enough. Green shoots in the undergrowth, as

Bank of England Governor, Mark Carney, says economic recovery has

finally taken hold. The Guardian's Nick Watt will swallow anything in

the bushtucker trial. Surviving in the outback is a tough business.

There is a danger of interest rates with a sting in the tail.

And it won't take us long to forget this year's celebrity contestants,

but are we remembering those who paid the ultimate price in the right

sort of way? Author and broadcaster Tony Parsons pays his respects. On

the second Sunday of November, we remember more than the glorious

dead. We also remember who we are as a nation.

This Week, marginally tastier than a kangaroo testicle. Get me out of

here! Evenin' all. Welcome to This Week.

Please do not adjust your sets, your channel or your drinks. I'm Emily

Maitlis. And if you're wondering where Andrew Ferguson Neill is,

well, what can I say? We've deleted him. We did. All of him. It took a

while, and some technical support. But if Tory Central Office can wipe

ten years of speeches, press releases, and broken promises from

our collective political memory, why can't This Week? Think of it as our

own small contribution to austerity and a saving on the licence fee.

We've removed every trace of AF Neill, dating back to 2003. If you

try and look for him here in the studio, or online, or stuffing his

pockets with free baklava in the first class lounge at Dubai Airport,

you will encounter a robot blocker which stops all communication and

makes a high pitched whining sound like this. "Mmmmm". Could come in

handy later in the show. Speaking of those we can forgive but never

forget, I'm joined on the sofa tonight by two men happy to pierce

anything in the name of publicity. Think of them as the David Dimbleby

and Cheryl Cole of late night political chat. I speak, of course,

of #manontheleft, Alan "AJ" Johnson, #sadmanonatrain, Michael "Choo Choo"

Portillo. They haven't moved from the sofa since this time last week,

but its given them plenty of time to think of their Moment of the Week.

Mine are contrasting moments. The interest rate decisions of the

European Central Bank and the Bank of England. The Europeans are

worried about prices falling, because debt is get bigger, because

money is worth less. On the other hand, the Bank of England is worried

about inflation. Why? Because wages are not rising so living standards

are falling. I think the British Government's strategy had been,

let's have inflation because it will make debt smaller. But without

income rising, there has been a big about turn and now we are going to

try to bring down our rate of interest. That means putting

interest rates up. You think we are heading that way. The Bank of

England has rotted forward by a year and a half. Last night's BBC News

from Colombo in Sri Lanka. There was first of all a government

spokesman, who was absolutely implacable and on movable, and

conceding nothing on human rights, and was very insulting towards this

country and the Prime Minister. And then the site of the BBC reporter

and cameraman almost being assaulted by security guards to stop them

asking a question of the President. I thought it was amazing but it also

changed my mind about the Prime Minister going to Sri Lanka. If he

had not been going there would have been a short news clip where they

announced he was not going, and we would have seen nothing of that. I

think that told the British people more about what is going on in Sri

Lanka than acres of newsprint. Now this week our PM has come under

attack on the same subject from both Russell Brand and former Prime

Minister, John Major. One called him "a filthy dirty posh banker". I

won't tell you what Russell said. They're both concerned that society

is increasingly run by a public school elite, distant from the

everyday concerns of the plebeian hoi polloi, to mix our classical

references. So are they right to be concerned, and is there anything we

can learn from the ancient world to help put things right? We turned to

TV don and Cambridge professor Mary Beard. This is her Take of the Week.

As a professor of classics who does some TV, I spend most of my life

reminding people that Latin and Greek you might think are out of

date and irrelevant, but are actually fun, interesting and really

matter. It strikes me that someone needs to do that for politics.

Even ex-prime minister 's are getting fed up. This week, John

Major had a point when he said the country was still run by toffs and

the affluent. I mean, you only have two blink and it seems like there is

yet another old Etonian in power. And as for dear old Russell Brand,

telling people not to vote, what a load of Tosh. My mum always used to

say to me, someone died to get you your vote. You Da one well use it.

-- you am well use it. But Russell Brand was right that we have got

disengaged with politics. I think that is because politicians no

longer seem to be speaking to us. They are just reading from a

preprepared script. Try listening to a struggling junior minister on the

today programme trying to remember their lines, if you want to know

what I mean. What happened to ideology, passion? We don't want

government I focus group. We don't want government by slogan. If I hear

that phrase hard-working families one more time I will be rushing to

the barricades and setting up a party for lazy singletons.

It may be that ancient Athens as have something to teach us. One of

their best ideas was what they called ostracism. Every year, the

citizens got together and decided there was some politician they would

just like to be rid of for ten years. Dead easy. They got little

bits of broken pottery, scratched the name and threw it into the

ballot box. Hey presto. Now, how exactly do you spell Portillo?

And from the British Academy at Carlton House Terrace to our own

little academy of national treasures here in the heart of Westminster,

Mary Beard joins us now. Democracy has been going on for a long time.

Is it really in crisis? In some ways, every Democrat always thinks

democracy is in crisis. That is what being a Democrat is about, saying we

could do it better. But there is a kind of commercialisation of it. I

think Russell Brand is onto something when he is saying is a

disconnect between us and them. The problem with them is not that they

are well-meaning. But a lot of them are going into this for all the

right reasons. But all they are doing is talking blasted sound

bites. That is the hard-working families it. It must be ghastly.

Sometimes when I am feeling generous, I think, how ghastly it

must be to be one of you. You have given up. Don't worry. I think

democracy is in crisis for the opposite reason. We had not had

democracy for ages. We had it in the fifth century BC and put it away for

2000 years. Democracy now is a new experiment. In 1941 there were 11

democracies and there are now 105. It is conceivable it is in crisis

because most of us have very little experience of it. What democracy

tends to do, it gets competing politicians to promise too much.

Because they have out bid each other. The only way you can then get

high is by borrowing from future generations, which is where we have

got to. We are too indebted. Our governments are far too indebted.

And yet politicians go on the missing more than they can afford.

You are being much too gloomy. I do not want to go that to fit century

Athens. People like me did not have any say. Being a woman, no say, no

vote, no nothing. When I think it was 100 years ago, I would not have

had the vote. Somebody says to me that democracy has not been coming

on of late. I think, we are not doing that bad in all respects. But

I sit town and I think about MPs in Parliament, looking at their iPhone

in the morning and being told the slogan of the day is hard-working

families. They did not go into politics for that. Did you? What

about the junior minister who has to come up with an alarm clock, and

stick to what they have been told? It is painful, isn't it? It is

painful and I was a junior minister doing it one day. But that is about

the media. It is the 24-7 media that makes demands on politicians. So you

are saying they have to do that? It would be unusual, or the presenter

says, we invited a government minister but none was prepared to

come. The way that you do it is important. You do not have to sound

like a speaking clock, as if you are reading a brief. You are not usually

talking about great affairs of War and peace, but about a policy you

are responsible for and helped to shape. It is not difficult to put

some interest into it. It is also perfectly respectable. Anybody who

runs an enterprising common with others, a company, a football team,

the school play, you have to agree on what your position is. In

politics it is more complicated because you are trying to win the

vote. So the coalition of interests is very broad. But then you have to

say not what you think or believe what you have agreed with others to

say. That is a perfectly respectable thing to do. But if you do it for 20

or 30 years it becomes very wearing, always remembering to say what you

have agreed with others. Keeps saying hard-working families and

slogans like that. I think most of the electorate, we know that

politics is a very inexact science. We know there are not right answers.

We know there are disagreements. And we know there are mistakes. When a

politician breaks a promise, like Nick Clegg on the fees. Do you

think, I understand what led to him doing that, or do you think, he

broke the promise I am never forgiving a Lib Dem again? You are

trading in certainties. It is no good to trade in simple certainties.

Better that they tell us nothing? It is always more complicated. We can

take over the idea that it is complicated. We do not have to be

told, whether it is in foreign policy, that this regime is nasty

until we discover it is nice, or vice versa. We do not have to say we

know about -- what to do about student fees, debt, inflation. We

know that we do not know. What happened to Nick Clegg is an

important lesson. He made promises because he never thought he would be

in office. What should the electorate do with that information?

They should think, who is not going to be in office next time? People

like UKIP. Therefore, we should understand they are only saying

things because they know they are not going to be in office. Does that

apply to Russell Brand? I tried hard to find something in what Russell

Brand said, because he has 7.1 million Twitter followers, all of

them under 30, and younger people were telling me that he is onto

something. But having read through a lot of his stuff, the New Statesman

piece in particular, I could find nothing other than trying to

intellectualise his apathy. I have one answer to Russell Brand which is

to say, you do not not vote. You go to the polling station, cross it out

if you do not like them on the ballot paper and you put, none of

the above, spoiled paper. And one day the returning officer will have

to get up and say, there were 20,000 spoiled ballot papers, and I think

we declare the spoiled ballot the winner. Mary has made a very good

point, that there is a lot of laziness in politics, but it is

nothing by comparison with the laziness of the critics of politics,

and Russell Brand is an example of that absolute basic intellectual

laziness. So, what do you do with all of the people that want to

follow him? That interview got 10 million hits on Youtube. What do you

do with that integrated, enthusiastic apathy? The one thing

he did have a point about is, young people today, and we were speaking

about educational maintenance allowance and student fees, there

seems to be, this is very broad brush, but elderly people are

protected, younger people are not. As someone has pointed out, all the

people vote, and therefore politicians perhaps play to that

audience. So, the things which Russell Brand wants, which is, to

save the planet, he says, and a more equal society, that is what I want,

that is what I came into politics for. But I did not come into

politics to repress all other opinions, which is what a

revolution, I am afraid, actually does. Coming back to the John Major

point, it is that politics looks the same, it is a leaps of school, of

education and gender, which is why it is isolating so many people? --

it is a leets. Yes, but you have got to face up to Russell Brand and you

have got to argue about method. -- it is elites. It is no good to say,

what a load of Tosh politics is. That is what you learn from the

ancient world, you do not learn any single method, you learn that

politics is about being a citizen, but is what we all are. Every single

one of us is a politician, and it is our duty to think about it in a

properly conjugated way, and to hold you guys up to account for being so

simplistic! We do not like simplicity. Is it not the case than

in ancient Greece, the people were obliged to participate in politics?

On one occasion. Did you get an invitation to the jungle this time?

I could not possibly comment. Now, it is late, and Tony Parsons joins

us now to discuss the politics of remembrance. Here, I am

contractually obliged to plug something on the internet, and here

is the page, for those of you who still use Facebook. Not that long

ago, in a studio not far away, there was Newsnight. People between eight

team and 23 turned out in their hundreds this week to audition for

the new Star Wars film. -- between 18 and 23. We sent Nick Watt of the

Guardian to join them. Mum, I think when I grow up, I want

to be Luke Skywalker, or maybe I want to be Neil Kinnock. I have not

decided yet. Open auditions have started in Bristol for the next Star

Wars film. Tel work I am off sick. Can I take

the car? In politics, you only get one shot at realising your dreams.

Everybody is after the top job, and you end up playing the hero or the

villain. Let's go. Westminster's leading man, that's the Prime

Minister, once told us that he takes no pleasure in imposing

intergalactic spending cuts. Then he stood up in front of the City's

finest and said, perhaps austerity was not that bad after all. It means

building a leaner, more efficient state. We need to do more with less,

not just now but permanently. It can be done. The Prime Minister would

like us to think that that is what he has always believed, but it is a

little difficult to know exactly what he does and after the Tories

deleted nearly a decade's worth of speeches from their website. This is

what he had to say about austerity in 2009. And in 2010...

These are not the files you are looking for. This was jolly handy,

because in 2010, the Prime Minister said that he was introducing out of

necessity, not out of ideological zeal. The Prime Minister believes

that his health and education reforms show that efficiency rather

than cash can deliver change. The danger for him is that he sends

mixed messages and hands a gift to his understudy, who is desperate to

differentiate himself from the Tories. On the right of British

politics, you have got a view which says, it is good to cut for its own

sake. I do not think you should be ideological about trying to slash

the size of the state. On the left, you have got a view which says you

should spend for its own sake. But it is a brave Tory Prime Minister

who says it is right to cut out of choice, when Labour is ahead in the

poles on things like schools and hospitals. -- in the polls. Oh, no,

iPod rocket fuel in the engine, not unleaded. Mum is going to kill me.

-- I put rocket fuel. For the first time in a long time, you do not have

to be an optimist to see that the glass is half full. Good economic

news always comes with a health warning. The quicker than expected

fall in unemployment means that the governor is going to have to bring

forward his assessment of whether interest rates should rise. Mark

Carney downplayed suggestions that rates would be shooting up just

before the general election. Labour maintained its focus on the cost of

living, and what one of its rising stars described as the pernicious

effect of the bedroom tax. Sorry, the spare room subsidy.

If the government sticks its head in the sand, let no one be in any

doubt, this will be the beginning, not the end, of our campaign to

cancel this unjust and unworkable tax, and if the Government does not

repeal it, the next Labour government will.

There is no danger of a winter health crisis for the Prime

Minister, who jetted off to India on a trade mission this week. He is

then heading to Sri Lanka for the Commonwealth Heads of Government

meeting. Labour is telling the Prime Minister he should boycott it in

protest at the treatment from Colombo of the Tamil minority at the

end of the 26 year war. There are legitimate accusations of war crimes

which need to be properly investigated. That is actually what

the Sri Lankan government with its own reconciliation exercise found,

that there were more questions to be answered. But that needs to be

done. Great, that is my audition over. Oh, one person who will not be

sending any takes any time soon is Nadine Dorries, who had to apologise

for failing to declare her feet for appearing on I Am A Celebrity. I

wish to apologise to the house for what was a genuinely inadvertent

breach of the rules. It has arrived! They love my

audition tape, and they want me to join the set in Australia.

Well, whilst Nick Watt was securing his future in Star Wars, we have had

Miranda Green joining us on the sofa. And you have it all to

yourself, unlike these guys, bunched up together. The economy, you have

already said you think there is going to be a rise in interest

rates, so do you see the glass as half full? I do, but I think the

growth of the economy, although it brings many benefits, also brings

challenges. House prices are rising very fast in London and the

south-east, but my view is that with this huge pool of unemployed

labourer in the European Community, there will be a lot of immigration

into this country, which will keep wage levels low. So, wages are

unlikely to increase very much, and prices are increasing very fast,

which is one reason interest rates have to go up. However, if interest

rates go up, that drives people's mortgages up, so at least one

section of the population will be hurting. What would you be saying to

Labour now about Plan A, and how to counter it? I do not think they need

any advice from me. We used to be asked, how come, if the economy is

doing so badly, Labour are profiting from it? Turn it around, how come,

coming out of recession, Labour are ten points ahead? It is obviously

something to do with the switch towards standard of living, and the

fact that people are not feeling any gain from this, particularly where I

represent, up in the North. I do not know where I am with Cameron now. If

you years ago, he was criticising us for not expanding the amount of

money we were spending on education and health as quickly as he wanted

to, but now, he wants a small estate. A few years ago, Osborne was

talking about exports and investment, but now it looks like

exactly as it did before, based on debt and a housing bubble. And yet

Plan A... It is quite hard you can hardly say that Osborne has been a

raving success. The fiscal deficit, which was the big issue for

government, they said, that is what we have got to get down, next year

it will be something like 79 billion. Our GDP is still 2.5% lower

than it was before the crisis. In America, France and Germany, it is

above that. But what is worrying for Labour is that Cameron is ahead of

Miliband, and also, the economy. But the big question is whether the

Labour strategists are right, as they are now crowing, saying, people

will work on -- people will vote on Micro, not macro. It is not worth

Labour getting into that conversation, I think. And they have

done the smart thing, which is move on to the question of how people

feel. It is the Ronald Reagan slogan, you feel better off than you

did at the last election? That is the real danger for the Government.

Particularly on interest rates, because so far, this recession, if

you are in work and a homeowner, you have got off pretty lightly, because

those mortgage rates have stayed incredibly low. And we have all got

used to that, so a rate rise will feel like a horrible shock to a lot

of people. What do you think the Lib Dems should do now, with this change

of language coming from Cameron, which basically says, we can do this

alone, forget the understudy? Well, they can do it alone if the

electorate gives them the opportunity to do that. I know there

have been theories that David Cameron actually prefers a coalition

to dealing with his own right wing, but you can actually -- cannot

actually govern alone if you do not win an election. The problem his

party has with him as a leader is that so far, he has not proved

himself a winner. He has had to say this because as you say, he would

rather lead a coalition, because there are 30-40 people in the

Conservative Party who would make his life impossible. So, he has two

emphasise that he wants a Conservative majority government. Is

it not just part of him taking his party back into itself. The big

society seems to have disappeared, other things as well, it is very

much an approach for the election, and just looking to get his core

vote. Well, that is not going to win him the election. The thing which

has survived, like a snowman into June, is the overseas aid. Michael

was mentioning immigration, and there have been strong words from

Jack Straw this week, I wonder what you're made of those, when he said

opening Britain's borders to Eastern European migrants was a spectacular

mistake? It was 2004. The birth rate was going down, the dependency

ratio, the number of people working compared to those retired, had gone

down from 12 to one, when Lloyd George introduced a pension, down to

four to one, and we had a 75% employment rate, one of the highest

ever seen. For Sweden, Ireland and Britain, the three most successful

economies, actually, there was a lot of sense to doing that. At the same

time, we initiated a review that put up the state pension age. It was

trying to tackle that. There was a very good argument for doing it. The

fact is that they got the sums wrong and the numbers coming over here

were much greater than forecast. But the actual decision to do that... I

suppose it is like good economics and bad policy, in the same way as

right to buy was good politics and bad economics. The point about the

dependency ratio, the ratio between those working and those claiming

pensions, remains grim. The document for having large scale immigration

remains very strong. But it is interesting, these lines, coupled

with David Blunkett's comments about the possibility of riots unless

migrants change their behaviour... I don't agree with that. I think the

group who recorded I predict a riot came from Leeds, not Sheffield.

David would be equally appalled by this, dark forces on the right. The

fact is, when we made the decision in 2004, there were only three

countries that the accession countries could have freedom of

movement to. His language was more emollient but he was saying there

are social cohesion problems with large-scale immigration from a

particular group that does not integrate, which is a fair point.

But I am very nervous about this as well. There has been a huge problem

for a long time. The argument Michael makes and Allen makes, I

agree with wholeheartedly, that immigration is good for the economy

and the country in a lot of ways. But it has remained an elite view

because the political elite have refused to address the effect that

it has on those groups that have to pay for it. This is UKIP creeping

into every narrative from each party. There is a substance issue,

too. Well motivated, qualified men from southern Europe is one thing.

People who do not integrate - and I think David Blunkett was talking

about Roma communities - that is a different problem. He cited

particular examples of problems of integration. I think he was probably

being straightforward. But the political problem it leaves us with

is government targets on bringing down immigration rates in an

arbitrary way, which is costing important sectors like universities

and is about nothing, really, because it is not about tackling

Eastern European immigration, which is the political problem in the

first place. Miranda, thank you. Now, its that point in the programme

where you're flagging a bit. I'm wondering what I can get away with

without losing the day job. As you've heard from Mark Carney, your

glass is already half full. None of that debauched Blue Nun this week.

That's been deleted too. Tonight, we proffer the warm fuzzy glow of a

Panda Cola left on a corner shop shelf since the mid 1970s. So finish

the job and get pouring, because its time for a handbreak turn more

awkward than John McCririck turning up unnannounced at Tessa Jowell's

book club. It's time for the Politics of Rememberance.

The nation marked a week of remembrance with Royals,

politicians, veterans and the public honouring those who served and those

who paid the ultimate price. With even the Lord Mayor of Belfast

paying his respects, as the first Sinn Fein politician to attend an

Armistice Day ceremony in person. This is the most difficult decision

I have had to make in three decades of politics and community activism.

My view, and a view of my Sinn Fein colleagues in the council and the

country, was that it is the correct place to be today. And strangers

from all over attended a funeral after a newspaper advert called for

mourners for the 99 your old veteran who had few close family and friends

left. But there was criticism, too, of a war movie for shooting in the

Oxfordshire countryside, and an ITV newsreader for failing to wear a

poppy on air. So, is the way we remember a matter of personal

choice, or an obligation on us all? And how important is it to be seen

to remember the dead? At least Westminster politicians know how to

deflect criticism, with not a donkey jacket insight.

Tony is here now. That was quite an interesting site, that sense of the

importance of being seen to commemorate in the right way. It is

the one moment you cannot afford to get wrong. It is our national day. I

was at the Senate after on Sunday and it really does feel like our

national day, when we are not in our ghetto of April the 23rd for the

English and another day for the Irish. We really do feel like a

United Kingdom. I think the politicians are largely superfluous.

They do not need to be there. It is about the marching and the crowds,

and about the glorious dead, the fallen, the men and women who are

not there. You get a sense they are holding their breath, because the

ghost of Michael foot hovers over those men, with their very

respectable black coats and poppies in place. You get a sense that a

political career could be ruined there in a moment. They do have to

turn up, don't they? These are the men who have sent young men to their

deaths. Tony Blair was there, hovering in the second row. Of

course they have to be there. But I don't think there is an obligation

to remember. You remember because it is the right thing to do, because it

is a day to reflect that many of the freedoms we take for granted were

hard earned and hard-won by previous generations. It is a very moving

day. When you see 80-year-old veterans from the Second World War

and 20-year-old kids who have lost legs in Afghanistan, it is a

difficult day to not be profoundly moved by. I wonder whether it has

had a greater significance possibly in the last ten or 15 years of fans

certainly when I was growing up, because of all the wars. I have just

noticed it over the years I have been in Parliament. There was a

bigger crowd this year than ever before. Although the memory gets

fainter, and the whole of the First World War generation have now gone,

and the Second World War generation, who were in their 40s when I started

work and worked alongside them in the Post Office, they are now into

retirement. And yet more and more of the public turn up at these

remembrance day services every year. I think something has brought it to

prominence and importance. Iraq and Afghanistan have been a large part

of it. I can remember in the 1970s, service men could not wear their

uniforms on leave. That was forbidden. That has changed. There

has been an assertion of national identity. The recent wars are part

of it, and the sacrifice. We see the selfless quality of those World War

II veterans. They are no different from the young men and women serving

in Helmand. They are no different from the people that stormed the

beaches at Normandy. There was a little storm this week about one

newsreader on ITV who refused to wear her poppy on hair for reasons

that she gave, which was that she supports a lot of charities and did

not want to do them publicly. Bullying people into wearing poppies

is absolutely wrong. It has become an ostentation. When it is an

ostentation, you begin to doubt the sincerity of the people caught up in

it. For example, if you go to a TV studio, you are more or less not

allowed in unless you are wearing a poppy. If you go to a radio studio

you can be there without a poppy. And do you go to lengths to put on a

public radio and TV? I wear one throughout the period, although I am

slightly worried about how longer period is becoming. This year

started on the 27th of October, which struck me as very early. In

the House of Commons, 100% of MPs wear poppies. In the population, it

may be 20 or 30%. You have people wearing the poppy because they

believe they have two wear it. The poppy is a very fine symbol, but

like many things it can be abused as well as used. That is true. The

newsreader was strange. I feel desperately sorry for any woman, and

they are mostly women, that get abused by idiots on Twitter. But it

was strange, her thesis, the premise that she was not wearing a poppy

because she supports other charities, as though it was the

dog's trust. I think it is not another charity. It is not just

another charity. Wearing your poppy and remembering, for two minutes a

year, people who gave their future for you, your lifestyle and

liberty, and all of the things we do not think about, it is not just

another charity. I think it is wrong to say that. I agree that it is

special but I still do not want to tell anybody that they have to do

it. And neither do I make the mistake of looking at somebody not

wearing a poppy and thinking, that person does not remember, and

someone who does and thinking, that person does. In Parliament, it is a

different situation. You are an elected representative. Unlike the

public that are not wearing one, if my constituents see me not wearing a

poppy, they think somehow my views, which matter because they elected me

and I'm elected on the platform of my views, that that means I am

against them. What about the conflict itself? Should that have

any bearing on whether you choose... I don't know what the

stats were after Iraq, whether fewer people felt that they did want to,

or more people felt they would. I think more people. But if there is

an anger towards whether you think something is a just war or not,

should that affect it? I do not think that changes the fact that

young men and women have died fighting for their country. I think

people feel enormous sympathy for our fighting men and women, that

they are going to wars that are really not like the war that my

father fought. It is not a war of national survival. We are not forced

into fighting in Iraq, or the Taliban in Afghanistan. I recently

read that we are there to combat the heroin industry, but the heroin

industry is booming in Afghanistan. I think a lot of the ball field

desperately sad that the brightest and the best, the flower of our

nation are being sent off to not a better war. There is a suspicion

among some people that politicians wearing poppies and talking about

heroes and heroines and so on could be using it as a way to avoid having

to answer questions about the causes of the wards, or the purposes of the

war to which they sending young men and women. And I think we need to

bear that in mind, too. The names of the dead are read out in the House

of Commons now, and that seems like an ostentation, to me. It is not

necessary to take Parliamentary time. It is right that they are

remembered, of course. Once you start, you can't stop, can you?

That's your lot for tonight folks, but not for us. I'm taking the boys

out of their Annabel's comfort zone. We're heading off to The Fruit

Machine in Vauxhall. It's not Rio, but its on the Victoria line. Anyway

we shouldn't be telling you this. Ministers got told off this week for

announcing their Parliamentary business on Twitter, instead of

before the House. Professionally, it doesn't get any better than this.

What a way to sign off. Good night.