Episode 1 The Big Questions

Today on The Big Questions: Fat cats, strikes, and today's wise men.

Welcome to the tenth series of The Big Questions.

Today we're live from Brunel University London.

Welcome, everyone, to The Big Questions.

This Wednesday was dubbed Fat Cat Day, when Britain's top

bosses earned as much after two and a half days'

effort as the average UK worker gets for a whole year -

The chief executives of the top FTSE 100 companies earned on average

just under ?4 million - that's each, not between them.

The top earner, Sir Martin Sorrell of the advertising agency WPP,

banked over ?70 million in 2015, the latest year

The national living wage for over 25s is just ?7.20 an hour.

You think that this has got a really detrimental effect on society as a

whole. Explain what you mean. We know that in countries where there

are higher levels of inequality, illustrated by this gap in pay, that

there are higher levels of violence, mental ill health, higher levels of

physical ill health, and poorer education. This affects everybody,

whether you are earning ?77 million or ?28,000. Why does it have that

effect on people? We're not talking about a Sheeran and Wayne Rooney.

Specifically people who are CEO of a company. It is symptomatic of a

highly divided society. The UK is the six most unequal country in the

OECD. We know that they and other organisations like the IMF are

paying inequality is a very bad thing for society and they are

worried about it in economic terms as well. It is about inequality,

isn't it? Supposedly so. What do you mean by supposedly? It depends on

whether you think inequality is a good or bad thing and whether that

means anything. Let me rephrase the question. Is inequality a good or a

bad thing? I would prefer to refrain to answer that because I prefer to

look at what it means for people to live with. Interesting. If you look

at firms with higher levels of income inequality, they tend to have

higher operational performance and they tend to have longer-term

returns for shareholders. What that means is that if you are in one of

those firms as low paid worker, what you really want is guilty in your

job and to know there is talent at the top. It doesn't necessarily

matter how much the person at the top is being paid. What you don't

want is for them to walk off and for you to be left with a company that

is not worth as much. You want to be working with a company whose share

price is doing well and you want to know there is talent at the top. We

live in a world where companies are getting bigger and bigger so people

are being paid more to run them. Because they are larger, and so

asking questions about whether inequality is good or bad doesn't

necessarily tell us what is good for the work on the ground. If you did

get rid of the top people because of the pay, and they went elsewhere...

But if pay doesn't matter, why not cut the pay? We don't know that

cutting pay improves performance. The illustration is that it doesn't

do that. Capping pay doesn't improve performance. Shareholders, fund

managers are getting more active as shareholders, they do cut pay and do

a of things like improving innovation, and they do more like

bringing up the value of the company through the operations, but they

don't cut pay to do that. So it is more compact than headline about

inequality? Having been a low paid worker myself at times, like many

people here, I wasn't thinking about the share price of the company. When

I was trying to make ends meet I wasn't thinking that. I wasn't

thinking it was all OK because if we keep the same buzz at the top you

will look after us. That is a really paternalistic view. -- the same boss

at the top, he will look after us. It doesn't matter who is at the top.

Whether the CEO does well or badly, they are still being paid obscene

amounts of money. Are these amounts of money obscene? They are extremely

high but there are two questioned here. Are they being paid more than

they are worth to the company? And other workers worse off as a result?

The answer to the first question is no. In general the CEO matters

enormously and having a good one can mean not just the difference between

profit and loss but life and death for a big company. On the second

point, the ordinary worker, I have had very low paid jobs as well and I

didn't care what the share price was. I did care about job security

and about that company being competitive and I did care about

knowing that next week and next month that my wages might be a bit

higher. The weighted get that is not capping it at the top and not

driving the talent away from the UK. It is to get the best leaders and

the best people at the bottom. Let me finish. I wish we would spend

less time worrying about how much people at the top are paid and more

time thinking about the wages at the bottom. It isn't and either or

situation. When you look at some companies, like Sport Direct, the

wages and conditions for the workers are appalling and the leaders are

paid a lot. Getting rid of the talent at the top is not going to

make things better for the workers. The corporate welfare is coming in,

the ?40 billion subsidy to the pensions, that is being creamed off

by the managers at the top making huge bonuses. Huge quantitive easing

been put into the banking system to rescue it. Meanwhile wages haven't

recovered to pre-2008 levels. This doesn't make sense. They are not

seeing the benefits. The top 1% pay the majority of all income tax. 90%

of people earn less than ?50,000 in this country. It is a very small

number right at the top creaming off excess profit. And paying a lot of

income tax. But your hands up, audience. I am sure you have an

opinion. One of the answers that has been suggested is to have workers on

remuneration committees, which would be more collegiate way of doing it.

Make that argument. I think it be more realistic as a conversation

based on the real experiences of the workforce. One of the reasons why

the huge numbers come out at the end of the process is because everyone

around the table is used to massive numbers and they are very highly

paid professionals desensitised to the public reaction when we hear how

many millions. So put members of the workforce in there to test these

huge pay packets and see why they are being awarded. They tried it in

Germany, workers on boards. And in the companies where it was tried,

they had far lower value than probable companies without workers

on the board. How are you measuring value? Worker satisfaction? Happy

families? Quality of life or just purely shareholder profit? Yes,

squeeze the wages and baby profit for people who invest. Or are you

talking about job satisfaction for people where they can build a life.

I don't disagree with that per se but when we came to the responses to

people, let's get government to do something about it, that seems to be

the best anyone can come up with. The government has got to do

something about it because the government is having to subsidise

people. People are not earning enough in their wages and their

take-home pay to exist in this country. The government is having to

pay in terms of tax credit, universal credit. They have got to

top people up. People are going to food banks in this country, people

who are working, and I think that is a disgrace. If I may, Theresa May,

if I may, is launching the shared society idea this week. Some people

were saying that ?10 million a year, ?15 million a year, whatever, is not

consummate with that. What does the audience thing? Green jumper? Quick,

if you would? What is the intention of the CEO? Are they there to make

long-term benefit for the society? If you look at 2008 prices, all the

CEOs were there what happened after that? CEOs make profits for the

shareholders. What is their intention? Are they there to make a

difference for society or to get their salaries? If accompanied as

well, the workers do well and society does well the

counterargument. -- if the company does well. If a person is looking

for a salary 300 times that of the average worker in this country,

surely the only thing you can be sure that that person is that they

are greedy and selfish? Is that the sort of culture you want to create

within that company and within society as a whole? Yes. Wizbit? Are

these people greedy and selfish? Bill Gates, he does philanthropy.

Everything has got to be quantified. As Theresa May said, we need a fair

society. When you look at BHS, which affected many thousands of people,

by one greedy person. Nobody minds CEOs that perform well earning lots

of money because obviously we need to support that creativity, but what

we are speaking about is where we see blatant corruption, and we

really need to fight against that. As the young lady mentioned at the

front about food banks, there is social enterprise in Wednesbury and

we have a food bank because our parents are so poor that they cannot

afford food and local authorities cannot afford to pay for the

education plans as opposed to support. We need a fair society and

we need to root out corruption both in private and local authorities who

don't pay for the things that people at the bottom rung of society need.

Thank you for that point. Anyone else? Mick Whelan, union man, what

are you stand about? We talk about family. I am not against wealth

creator Jim, economic viability, contributing to GDP, people going

well. -- wealth creation. But the tactic is doing well off of the

employees, not off of investment. How can we manufacture additional

profits by taking it away from the people we employ? It should be

shared about. Don't we have a million kids between the ages of 16

and 24 who are not in employment? We have the biggest growth in zero

hours, typified by ASOS and Sport Direct. People are suffering from

companies that make massive profits and don't recognise the contribution

of the staff. The only thing that we are really debating is whether CEOs

matter to the value of their firms. Hang on. Does a company that makes

the right strategic decisions have an edge on its rivals? All the

people with money on the line, share investors, pension funds, they all

agree that when a good CEO leaves a firm, the firm becomes much less

valuable. The person who ran Burberry, when she stepped down

suddenly, Burberry became half ?1 billion less valuable and she was

paid much less than that. Martin Sorrell is a great example. Is he

worth ?70 million? I think Bob. He built WPP. -- I think more. They

made shopping baskets before he came along and now it is one of the most

important advertising firms. He built it from the ground up with his

hands. This is a very important person. You one study like that

leading your phone whether you are share holder or worker. -- leading

your firm. I will come back to you. What about that situation? We are

going to drop your page dramatically, Mr or Mrs CEO, and

they say, OK, I will take my laptop, leave the company and go to Geneva

and you lose that talent. What about that? I think it is very rare that

it is a Mrs! The FTSE 100 CEOs, there are six women, which is

another issue. But what if they are going elsewhere and you lose the

talent? We are possessed with talent. We are calling it talent.

These people are working extremely hard and they may be extremely

creative and as somebody has already said, what is Martin Sorrell doing

for ?77 million that he would not do for 76 million? He built the company

from nothing. Great. The problem is that businesses don't exist in

isolation. Whether it is WPP, any other business you care to mention,

it is built on the back of the education of its workers that we are

all contributing to, being built on police keeping society safe so they

can keep their businesses going, it is built on the efforts of nurses

and care workers and people who look after our children so we can go to

work. These people are not seeing any benefit from this. Does not in

isolation. Justin? Does this not set the great example in our society? I

could one day be making ?70 million a year. Maybe not! As I said that...

I would be confident that you would be giving it back to the people

because you care more. Allegedly! Is it an aspirational thing? We are

discussing inequality and voices in the audience said it didn't matter

but of course it matters. We are society. There was an argument made

over here that the bigger your company, the more money you can get,

does that work for the NHS? Does that work for schools? Do teachers

get paid more when they are teaching 30 children? Of course not. This

failure to recognise that there is a contradiction between saying we are

all citizens, all equal, we all get the vote, but you don't matter

because you only earn ?5 a week, it is a con. If we really believe in

society, we should be investing in everybody, irrespective.

NHS workers and teachers know that they don't get as much, they are not

working for private companies. That begs the question whether end we

start from somebody come and we have not specified who, needs to stick

their finger in and cut CEO papered do we also have to cut middle

management pay? We are talking about the CEOs of private companies. This

is a creature of the state. There is a knock-on effect on public sector,

not all teachers are working for the state, many are working for private

companies, with academise Asian. -- with academies. We are seeing this

have an impact because then it forces up the wages in the private

sector. Stefan, I have had enough from you. You don't normally save it

is counterintuitive that is put to you because you might agree, we will

get somebody to respond, but it looks like hay and remuneration that

up. -- pay and remuneration of a company fails, what is going on

there? A system that doesn't work and the latest big set of research

from Lancaster University shows there is no link at all between

vastly increased CEO pay packages and capital letters. You can

understand if it goes well, they get a bonus. But who is doing the work?

The bigger the company, the moral support the CEO has come the more

senior managers there are the more divisional managers there are, there

should be less credit to a CEO for running a bigger company and they

don't run it on the own. They take decisions with the board and with

their senior management teams. There is this superhero vision of one

human being apparently changing the destiny of the corporation with tens

or hundreds of thousands of people doing the work. And the middle

managers are taking the decisions. It is very tell stuff. We pipe up

these people and they take and demand ever bigger packages and they

are getting them because there is nothing to stop them. Sony ten years

ago was much bigger than Samsung, they decided to invest in

smartphones and Sony didn't and that was a good idea. Samsung is a giant

and stone is that Regazzoni is getting worse because of a strategic

decision made by someone at the top. If I was Sony I would have wanted

the right CEO who took that decision.

That the numbers in perspective is that this gentleman made a good

point that we have to quantify it. In an average FTSE 100 company, the

average salary of the CEO is less than one 1000th of the operating

costs. It is not to us and anybody watching for -- but what the company

is a tiny amount to spend to get the best person for the job. If you

think that Tim Cook is not with 0.001% of Apple's costs, you need to

think more about what happened in the companies when they make the

wrong decisions. Is it not the case that it is not so much what people

get if they have a successful company and they are vibrant and

energetic and dynamic, it is what people get riled about is the

evasion and tax evasion and dodging. If you have somebody like Bill Gates

for example with making huge amounts that is doing a lot of philanthropy

and doing a lot for society, do you not celebrate somebody like him? Of

course and the world would literally be a poorer place if we do not have

such great philanthropists as that but these are different issues. You

look at somebody like Warren Buffett comedy is concerned about inequality

-- he is concerned. It is an evil is decided that there is a big gap. The

business community is bothered about this. Research shows that 71% of

employees are concerned about bosses pay and think it is too high at 59%

are demotivated by that service is having an effect on productivity.

Also on morale, if we value an average CEO at 324 times the income

of a care worker, that shows that our society is putting profit before

people. APPLAUSE Thank you very much. The first

debate of our new series and very interesting.

If you have something to say about that debate log

on to bbc.co.uk/thebigquestions and follow the link to where you can

We're also debating live this morning at Brunel University,

should industrial action only target employers?

And would today's wise men believe in God?

So get tweeting or emailing on those topics now or send us any other

ideas or thoughts you may have about the show.

It's been a miserable six months for the hundreds of thousands

of people who commute into London on Southern Rail,

the rail franchise that serves much of Kent,

They've faced cancellations, delays, over-crowded trains and all-out

strikes in a dispute over whether the sliding doors should now

be controlled by the drivers instead of by separate guards on the trains.

On Thursday, a report from the rail regulator said that driver-only

trains would be safe on Southern Trains provided certain

And one of the unions agreed to talks with

the Transport Secretary, Chris Grayling.

As things stand, there's three more days of strikes called for next week

And to make matters worse, the tube trains are on strike today

and British Airways employees are all out on Tuesday

It's not a good week for passengers to get anywhere on time.

Should industrial action only target employers,

Can we not find out a way of doing that? Give us an idea of the misery

this has caused the collateral damage of this strike. There was no

doubt who feels the pain on transport strike and passengers are

many of whom don't have choices, they rely on these services to get

to and from home and it makes their lives a misery. Southern rail,

300,000 people every day use their services to get to work and back and

their lives are being disrupted. It is costing businesses tens of

millions of pounds of people don't know if they can get to the office

at what time, to meetings, theatres, restaurants, shops, their takings

are down. People don't stick around at the end of the day and of course

there is a human cost. The passengers don't know what time they

are getting home, can they the family meal, can they have bath time

with the kids? Most passengers would say that enough is enough and get

back to talks. Collateral damage is huge on this. Misery is not too

strong a word. Yes. And I spent most of my life promoting the rail

industry, trying to get long-term investment, and get fares down to

rate where people can afford them, not 14% of their gross income. But

you get to a situation, we have only just recently gone on strike, our

first strikes were early in December and we halved those strikes next

week in relation to consideration us. The reality is this is not a

pecuniary strike, it is not about money, we're not looking for

leverage or better conditions or pay, we believe that these 12 yard

trains are unsafe. We are campaigning for safety. Short-term

pain and long-term gain? We hope so. We're not doing this for ourselves,

this is not the normal sort of dispute in relation to a poor pay

offer. The regulator said it would be safe with certain conditions. The

evidence to the transport select committee and the report last week

they said that it can be safe and went on to highlight issues we said

were unsafe and did not give an improvement. Cleaning the mirrors

was one of them. If you can't see the people on the platform and you

can't do the platform train interface, it is inherently unsafe.

Passengers always see the he said, she said of the unions and employers

and this is where we have to like an expert evidence from trusted

independent third parties and that is what we had last week, the

regulator, Her Majesty's inspect of railway, an independent person

saying this is a safe way of working. -- inspector. They made

some recommendations and make's members were involved. They

identified some improvements that could be made, whether it is cutting

away foliage, improving lighting and in some instances where there is not

good visibility, having extra staff in the station. For the most part

this is a safe way of working there are things that could be done to

make it safer but instead of a wholesale disruption, work with the

employer. The idea that this wholesale disruption has come from a

strikes if nonsense. At Stratton Station for years, because of

Strathern -- Southern rail's incompetence from the station has

been run into the ground. We are suffering as passengers. It has been

bad and it is getting worse. My son is a wheelchair user and he cannot

use the railways without help. Southern rail are proposing to take

that away, we were to plan journeys much more in advance. This should be

a public transport system that works and is fit for purpose and serves

everybody but he will not be able to use it and of other disabled people

will not be able to. A lot of people don't realise that Southern rail is

basically nationalised. In 2015 it was taken into public hands, they

kept the brand but the Department for Transport decide on pay and

conditions. That's not true. I'm happy to show... They formed the

core GTR and put south-eastern, Southern, great Northern together.

What they did to force this group was given a contract where all the

revenue goes to the government and the government bears the costs, it

is still privatised... And the government decides pay... Let him

finish his point. The government decides conditions of this is no

more privatised than London buses. That thing in Dia Chakravarty. What

kind of disputes can we have going ahead that will change things and

give better conditions for workers? And if there is a proper grievance,

to address them and redress them, without members of the general

public suffering as much as they have been doing and as much as they

will be doing with other disputes in the coming weeks? That is where the

debate should be. If the unions are telling us that there is a pay

issue, a work commission issue, people would be more willing to

listen. All we hear from the outside, as we just heard from the

unions saying this is a safety issue where we do have independent experts

saying it is not. You mentioned the report from last week, we have seen

requests from the London Evening Standard which also came out last

week saying that the number of incidents, serious incidents, in

driver only trains had been coming down massively. We don't really see

a safety issue but we keep hearing from the unions that there is one.

It seems to us like there is a lack of transparency and honesty on the

unions part. That makes it very difficult for us to understand why

this is going on and we are the ones being held hostage. We need unions

in society. Absolutely, they have an important in protecting workers'

rights but with that comes great responsibility. To what extent can

they hold us hostage and if they do, they have to be honest about it.

Just a second, please. If they do think that conditions are not good

enough and to strike, they have to ask if they are just about to go to

strike. It is an issue of trust. My dad was a doctor, he went into the

NHS as a vocation, we get to the point where we see junior doctors

concerned about the NHS being on its knees and now we see that it is, we

should have listened to them. We should listen to the teachers...

APPLAUSE We should listen to the train

drivers that are safety issues because we don't listen to the

people who are at the metaphorical coalface who are dealing with

reality. Listen to the people doing the job. Why do you think the

experts are constantly lying? I think Michael Gove make an

interesting point about not believing experts. We would have an

empty front row if we do not have expert! There is a clear public mood

when we think a government policy of divide and rule, dividing passengers

against Uni and when the real villains in this other government

and why not intervening and could sort this out -- against unions. If

they listen, we could sort this. Organisations like us would say OK,

if government is the source of all evil, open it up and take it out of

their hands and let there be more competition, more deregulation. Who

does Southern rail compete against? This is nonsense. So why don't we

open up? Don't have the ?1.2 billion sucked out by the prophets and

invest it in a decent and proper train service -- profits.

Excuse me! Let's hear from the people. Sorry! In the glasses?

Having doors that are just operated by drivers, we have been doing that

in the London Underground for 40 years, and it works. On the

platforms we have got people who are there who will allow trains to go on

and off. The list can be done safely and we have got CCTV. There is so

much technology around it. Other unions using this as an excuse

because they are worried that train guards will be a job that is

removed? I am not quite sure what the unions are gaining on this. I

think the lack of transparency doesn't match up with what is being

said. The moral heart of this is the collateral damage, if you want to

use that phrase. Customers, travellers, members of the general

public. We heard about misery and that is what we are discussing here

really. How can that be avoided? I don't think it can be avoided in the

short term for a long-term game, as you said before. If I'm travelling

on the train, I know this gentleman spoke about having no guards, but I

was on the DLR last week and there was a guard opening and shutting the

doors. We say that isn't true that in some cases it certainly is. It is

the right of a worker to withdraw their labour if they feel that

safety is a crucial issue. Personally I would feel that the

person who is driving the train or the person involved in the flights

with British Airways, whatever that dispute is, they are on the front

line, so I believed then more than an employer who may have a vested

interest. The flight crew lay is astonishingly low. Some people would

be surprised at how little it is. It is something like basic pay,

?16,000. Yes? I think there should be an honest debate. We are trying!

Normally in these instances, you usually get experts, but experts are

not the users. We should hear from the users themselves. He has got the

son who has a wheelchair. We should take on board more his opinion

rather than listening to the so-called experts. You are user,

aren't you? How has your using been recently? Misery is a nice way of

putting it. I have been used as a football. My staff, my candidates,

my clients, they are having trouble getting to and from work. Sit down

at the table and negotiate, don't use us as the football. Yes, there

are issues that need to be sorted out but you don't need to strike and

you don't need to make someone's income impossible because of the

strike. And family life? It is putting a real strain on people that

use Southern Trains so it would be nice to see them back at the table

and they are blaming each other for not doing that. This is something

they do in France with transport strikes. They turn up to work and do

their work for no pay, but they open the turnstiles and they let people

travel for free. So the company suffers but the general public

don't. Little idea for you. Nice idea. Great idea. Part of the

problem here is that the very thing we are talking about, for the last

nine months they would rather have us in the High Court four times than

sitting round the table. It is only now that we have a strike that

people say they want to talk to us and they have gone to ACAS. We have

been willing to talk throughout. What the strategy of the company and

the government is a fait accompli, they will do what they want until it

is too late for you to do anything about it. The reality is that

Britain is not a great place to be. Sexual assault has gone up on the

railways over the last 12 months. Drivers when travel on were well

trained at certain times of night because it is not safe. -- private

way to travel on certain trains. But what about the conductors? Well

where are they? The people they promised not there now. Has there

been an industrial dispute in this country that you have not supported?

Yes but that is personal and I will keep it to myself. It was just

getting interesting! We all have value judgments we make about why

people do certain things. In relation to this dispute, this is

about a safety issue that we feel incredibly strongly about, and it is

driven by the 18,000 people that drive these trains every day. Trust

the people that work on the trains because they know more about it than

you do. My simple question. Why not trust the unions can tell us. What

are people meant to see when you look at the requests and apparently

these departments are responding truthfully. If not the unions should

probably take them to court. It is very confusing for people sitting

outside. One of the offence we keep hearing about his ticket office is

getting shut down. That has nothing to do with safety, come on, you have

got to agree to that as well. It is just about keeping jobs. There are

minimum staffing requirement on stations after the King's Cross

fire. If they are not in place, and ticket offices are not open at

certain stations, they aren't safe but I'm not involved in that. Has

the role of union changed in your society and will it change in the

future? It is important but it is interesting to note that the average

union member is a woman, over 50 and works in the public sector, not the

private sector. We are increasingly seeing that private sector workers

are deciding not to join unions and I think that is all the worse

because unions do much more than just striking. What should the

union's main role be? They can give union support to workers, let you

know if they are being taken advantage of, and advice bureau.

There is an important role there. Let me finish. A huge percentage of

the public believe trade unions are good thing. OK, but they are not

doing that with their feet. Unions take a combative approach, that is

the real danger, they strike a lot, which drives up the cost of having

them, and they will be replaced. Where we have got driverless trains,

there may not be any drivers in ten years' time to strike. The more

difficult they make it to work with them now, the quicker the axe falls.

He isn't difficult. He is a pussycat. The lady right behind you

wanted to say something. Nick is exasperated. With the safety and

that you have got to take on board all aspects of that, but isn't

striking making the recovery harder? With a taxpayers and the people

paying for tickets, the people who support the railways, for people not

to get to jobs, to lose their income, surely there is another way

around it? Revenue strikes or something. Seppi tackles the

employers rather than customers. -- soak it tackles the employers rather

than customers. This is the moral question. It's sometimes said that

management gets the unions they deserve and there has been horrible

mismanagement in the railways. It shows how difficult it is to take

legal industrial action in this country. If you go on other railways

in this country you get contented railway forces and they are proud of

the railway on which they work. I always speak to people about their

jobs and that is very much the case but you cannot say that about this

company at the moment. It is a public service and people are not

paid a lot of money. They go into it because they want to do that but

they have got to be in an environment where they can do their

job safely. We have got to find a way out. Striking like this is a

nuclear option with massive impact and all sites need to find a way

back from the brink. This is having a devastating impact on hundreds of

thousands of people. The safety case doesn't sound... Independent voters

have looked at this and said it isn't unsafe. Doubtless it could be

safer. Nick and his members have not been on strike. I really would urge

you to go the extra mile and find a way of going back to the table and

calling a halt. We have try to find a way through this 24 hours a day

and there has been an unwillingness. This was driven by the DFT 12 months

ago and they openly said this would be the consequence of what they

wanted to do and they would rip up the contract of the drivers but

spectacularly the media don't report that. The media are not showing all

the evidence we produce on what the driver can and more importantly

cannot see. Nobody wants to go on strike. It is the last option of any

trade union. My members don't want to be losing money prior to

Christmas and post-Christmas and they have the same pressure on them

as everyone else. They don't want people to be massive fares and we

empathise with the travelling public. They are the people we want

to help most and we don't want to alienate them. Tell us about the

abuse they are getting. Naturally when people can't get to work

because trains are delayed, it is only highlighted by this dispute how

poorly the staff suffer. They couldn't run 25% of their services

without the goodwill and overtime of drivers, which tells us they have a

dearth of resources anyway, which is why the service was and is so bad.

Should there be a moral limits on what you impose on the consumer, the

customer, and travel? Should there be a line beyond which you should

not go? These are hard-won rights and we have seen improvement over

the decades because of strong unions and the right to strike. If you take

that away, we risk going back. There are less unionisation in the private

sector because employers are clamping down on employees. We need

workers to be listened to and we need them to have control because

that will make the workplace a better place. Thank you.

If you have something to say about that debate log on

to bbc.co.uk/thebigquestions and follow the link to where you can

Tell us what you think about our last big question too.

Would today's wise men believe in God?

Next week we're back here at Brunel University

for a special edition asking just one big question - is digital

And if you'd like to apply to be in the audience at a future show you

We're in Bradford on January 22nd, Glasgow on the 29th

Friday was Epiphany, the day the three wise men finally

found the baby Jesus, God in human form,

after following the star in the East.

They were Magi, revered and respected Babylonian astronomers

and astrologers who studied the movements of the stars

and the planets looking for signs and portents of important events -

so rather like ancient versions of Professor Brian Cox,

except they believed in magic, miraculous events and in God.

Would today's wise men believe in God?

Brian does not believe in any of the above. Doctor Vince Vitale, author

of Jesus Among Secular Gods. Here is a thing, the more educated you are,

the less likely you are to believe in God. Why? On this question I

would have answered no. Why is that? Why is that the case? Why is it the

case that the more educated you are in the less likely you are to

believe in God? There are many reasons for that and it depends

where you are looking. It is not the case in most places in world and in

most times throughout history. A new survey in 2013. Most of the highly

educated people around the world believe in God because most people

do believe in God. I was studying philosophy in Princeton and I

thought they've had to be blind and rational, and I thought irrational

faith was a contradiction in terms and I were surprised when I first

began to look into this and I first opened the Bible and I saw it

talking about debating, like this show, and reasoning, and the word

persuasion is most used when suddenly makes the decision to

become a Christian. I like that you chose the word wise for this show.

When you have a conversation with someone and you think that person is

wise, what are you talking about? You are not just talking about who

is most educated. Somebody might be very intelligent. When you are

asking about wisdom, you are asking about direction for life and if you

want directed by life you need answers to some fundamental

questions of life, origin, meaning, morality and destiny. That comes

from metaphor and interpretation. If somebody said to you that I believe

literally in Adam and Eve and I believe the earth is less than

10,000 years old and I just saw an angel, would you say they were wise?

Let me start with a starting point. Origin meaning morality and destiny.

We have got to answer those questions before we get to that.

Those are the fundamental question that everyone has got to answer

them. It is easy to poke holes in certain forms of literalism, but

criticism has an empty alternative. Where do we come from? Is there a

meaning in life? Is their purpose and where are we headed? If you

answer that you can live with wisdom and pass it onto others. That the

point for each of us. Interesting. Interesting thought if

I may say so. But if the between the more educated you are, the less

likely you are to believe in God? Vince makes a nice point about the

word wise but maybe the most natural way to interpret wisdom is referring

to intelligence and rationality... Curiosity. We don't know what the

village between intelligence was an belief in God was 2000 years ago but

today's wife men and women are less likely to believe in God. There is a

lot of literature on this. Why is that? A number of reasons, one

possibility is that people who are more intelligent art is likely to

conform, we don't live in a cultural vacuum and a lot of our beliefs are

influenced by the provided link culture around us and another for

civility is highly intelligent people are more inclined to be

analytical and not go with their gut a number of reasons. They might be

turned off by Liz Watson. It says in the Koran and the vital that you

should go out and seek knowledge -- literalism. There is a lot of

resistance two sides. That is true. -- persistence to science.

That will always be an obstacle. It is also to believe in God can take a

certain amount of intellectual unity because you are agreeing that there

is being fat is lot smarter than you and that will narrow the conclusion

that you control -- fact is a lot smarter. Meacher

that if the -- Meacher said that if there was a god, how could I then

not to be one. -- Nietsche. Russell, you understand astrology and

particle physics and obviously evolution but if somebody said that

they believe in angels, would you think they were wise? I would think

I would have to ask them why they believed in it,... It is in the

Bible. And personally I do believe in angels but in an certain context.

I was brought up in an environment of nominal churchgoing but had never

really experienced the narratives about Jesus as a person and it was

at the age of 18 when I was beginning my first degree in physics

that I read some of the eyewitness account of the life of Jesus and I

was amazed at the things that were there and the authority I have ever

heard of before. For the last 27th years I have been living this

tension Anne Haug on on the one hand I can be faithful to this person,

Jesus, but on the other hand be a fully fledged academic physicist --

about how. It is a wonderful tension to be able to study the physical

mechanisms of the universe... What is a particle physicist's take on

angels? You believe in them. As a Christian, we look to Jesus as the

primary source of information about God. I am sure Ryan will be talked

about the fact that our brains are predisposed to want to make up

stories and so there are a lot of stories about fairies and angels.

What is the difference between them? Mythological creatures that have no

statement in fact. I think we have to be careful. As the psychologists

and evolutionary people will tell us, we are proud -- predisposed to

make up stories so we have to investigate and look for authorities

and to see who actually knows about spiritual things and test them. Just

like good scientists as to test things and separate the myths and

the stories from the underlying realities. Justin. I think the idea

of testing biblical statements, you mentioned eyewitness in the Gospels,

around the Nativity the Gospels or contradict and fill in gaps. If we

go to that with serious criticism, we discovered it is a random series

of stories. Stories are useful for making people do things but the

notion that we have a Nativity today with the stable and the oxen and the

three wise men confected in the middle ages. They start painting

pictures of boxes and God knows what else. It is a fantasy. There is no

reason to think there were three, it is an example of the fact that when

we don't take these texts seriously enough, we assume there were three

wise men and then maybe we can quickly to the conclusion... People

who came to adore this strange offspring of a virgin... Russell and

Vince make some interesting points I thought about a deeper level of

understanding of the greater truths. I sense from both of them that they

were uncomfortable with literalism of people saying that that happened,

the Earth is 6000 years old and all that, but let me put that to you, it

can put a lot of people off religion because they hit it and they think,

come on. The Bible to me is a very rich text but in different genres

and some art historical and some are poetic and some are creation

narratives and we have to look at each one in a deep way and say, what

was the intention of the author in the first place? But we might get as

much out of reading Lucretius and Cicero all engaged with the fact...

Whether we would get as much out of them... Some of the creation myths

of religion are fascinating. And if we get as much out of them depends

on the truth question, whether or not this true. I beg your pardon,

the gentleman there. By any historical standards, the texts

don't fit. The contradict one another and by and scientific

standard, you are looking at miracles as evidence for God, these

don't stand up either. If we are saying, should a wise man, whether

that be an academic or other scientists, should they believe in

God today, you have to almost suspend your critical faculties to

do so. Do you do that? You are a distinguished physicist, are their

two Russells? Definitely not and did I became a Christian I have thought

more about philosophy and meaning and truth, the sort of things that

are the bread and butter of philosophers but actually which

scientists don't often think about. For me, becoming a follower of Jesus

has pushed me towards deeper thinking and a deeper analysis of

all aspects. I know a lot of academics and physicist who are

religious but also accept science are very excited by the subatomic

world. Do you think God is there? We call this God of the gaps, when we

try to look for God and the part of science we are not clear about. And

when we understand that he has to move to another gap. I would say

that God is the primary cause of all the things a primary explanation --

parallel explanation. What an interesting phrase. Spinoza was the

first man, he was the biblical critic and understood the old

Testament and the new Testament and heated the big failure of modern

religion is to try to derive science from a text that is essentially

nonscientific. I would never try to do that. So how do we meld the

scientific and the religious world? But you don't try to do that? You

talk about nonoverlapping magisterial. That is a term that can

be helpful but there is a bit of overlap as much as what scientists

today and what people of 2000 years ago have in common is that we want

to understand the world in its entirety. We are curious people who

want to know what it means to be human in the universe and part of

the answer to that question comes by understanding the physical world

around us, the mechanisms, but part of it wants to know who made this.

Who are the authorities? Who would we want to look to for ultimate

explanations? To only take half of that question and only look at the

physical mechanisms and not the wider question I think is to miss

out on half of life. You wanted to say something? Looking at the little

question, we have to say, what has been the impact of literalism. It is

a relatively recent phenomenon in this country. Yes but we are lucky

that we are in the age that we are and we can have this debate.

Beforehand, the framework of the whole society was religion and if

you dissented, you paid the price. Talking about angels, we also had to

talk about the demon and -- demons and the devil. Over 50,000 people

were executed, many women, not always, 26% were men, but they were

executed because of Exodus 22-18, thou shalt not suffer a witch to

live. An eccentric person, people pointed the finger at you. Devils,

demons? Come on! I think we have to be specific. Jesus is the one I

would look to who knows about these things and there are times he talked

about these things and times he dismissed them as superstition so it

is a case-by-case basis. That is terrible what you cited, but no

world view would want to be judged based on the worst things that have

been done in its name. And we have to look back to the founder of

religion, to Jesus who said to love your enemies and pray for those who

persecute you. And do and others as you would have them do to you. We

take that for granted. If that something perhaps predated religion?

It is not. I think it is, I think we have a deeply ingrained sense of

fairness. In very young children, coming back to our first debate,

they be strongly to unequal distributions of things like

stickers for instance. There is a psychological cost that we pay when

we witness unfairness. This vaunted question of the relation between

religion and morality, Wanda's point, a psychologist, Paul Bloom,

has satirised this idea, I see your style and I raised you the Crusades.

The idea that you take historical examples... Stalinism was very much

a quasi-religious system. The gentleman with the beard. I feel

like the wise men of modern times probably wouldn't believe in God

because there is like a taboo about it. You get an umbrella term with

Christians, if you believe in God you believe in angels and a man put

all these animals on an arc. It becomes a ridiculous thing. But I

think you really should. Science can give you the how but they cannot

give you the wide. If you're a broader knowledge of something the Y

-- the why. Is there a why? No. That is all we have got time for!

As always, the debates will continue online and on Twitter.

Next week we're back here at Brunel for that special debate