Episode 3 The Big Questions

Good morning and welcome to The Big Questions. We are in Peckham, at

the Harris Academy. Tomorrow Occupy will have been encamped outside St

Paul's Cathedral for 100 days. They are not likely to be there much

longer. On Wednesday the City of London Corporation won of High

Court case to evict them. Our first big question, do we need to protect

the right to protest? Some of the protesters are here to put their

case. The coalition Government wants us to be happier so they have

tried to find ways of raising our levels of contentment. The next big

question, should governments care about happiness? Alastair Campbell

is with the Government on this one. This weekend is the Feast of St

Agnes, the patron saint of chastity and young girls. What better time

to ask our next question? There sex-education encourage teenage

sex? Nadine Dorries wants to encourage more young girls to say

Well come. The Mayor of London described Occupy as baffling

protest against capitalism that have led to not a single

resignation of a banker but of three clerics. Christian groups

have pledged to protect the protesters from the bailiffs are

withering of prayer. They would not have been outside the Cathedral at

all if swathes of the engine public's -- ancient public spaces

had not been turned into private property. We have seen many people

wrongfully arrested for trumped-up charges. I know people have been

arrested for criminal damage for treacle on a tablecloth or

possession of an offensive weapon, the bicycle lock, and somebody

could not go home at Christmas because he had leaflets in his back.

Lots of public money is being spent on people that are trying to change

is unjust world in a peaceful way. Do you think it is verging on the

authoritarian? I do. I think it is scarily verging on it. There is

this other situation. My experience that Occupy is that on a number of

occasions I have been walking with some other members of the grid,

towards the student protest, for instance, and it happened on the

public sector workers' strike, and if you get a few of us walking down

at the Street, there is a line of police that wants to stop and

search us. Everywhere I look there are groups of people walking

together up and down, and they are not being stopped. It is constant.

It almost verges on harassment. Boris Johnson has also described

you as hand smoking fornicating hippies in crusty little tents. --

cannabis smoking. Yes, we are not all hippies. There are hippies of

course, but there are lots of other people. There are people in all

kinds of work, teachers, security guards, former soldiers, everybody.

When we say we are the 99%, we do not mean that 99% of people are

outside protesting. Women that we are from 99% of all walks of life.

-- we mean that. Why are you wearing your mask? If I am part of

the anonymous collective and we believe we have the right to remain

anonymous. What are you protesting about? We have a situation that the

vast majority of people realise cannot be sustained and is damaging

for the vast majority. Not to get ahead of ourselves in a debate, but

the idea of David Cameron talking about increasing happiness at the

same time as pursuing these policies is nonsensical. What is

the main thing for you? One thing? We have and 99% and the 1%

situation, which is a major one for me. 1% of the world's population is

controlling the wealth. The rest of us, the 99%, are really struggling

to make a decent living. There are solutions. What do you think,

Nadine Dorries? Everybody has the right to protest but I think there

reaches a level when it crosses over a boundary and becomes a

situation that affects the lives of others. Your point about bordering

on harassment, an interesting phenomenon has occurred recently

when MPs have noticed that people coming to visit us at the House of

Commons are being stopped by security and not allowed in because

in their backs they have political leaflets. This is absolutely

bizarre because the kind of people that come to see us in the House of

Commons 10 to be political and are likely to be carrying political

leaflets. -- tend to be political. That is strange and I agree with

you on that. With the protest at St Paul's, many people want to visit

it and enjoy St Paul's because it is a tourist destination, and I

think perhaps the protest in that particular spot has become almost

out of control. Everybody has a right to protest, but...

The PR has done you no good because they have been playing us on the

minimum wage cleaning up after you and people not being able to access

the Cathedral. On that last point, people cleaning up after us, people

on camp clean up every single day. We clean up, we sweep the steps of

St Paul's Cathedral. I don't think the cleaners are lying. If you turn

up in the early hours of the morning, you will suit people

sweeping up on St Paul's. -- you will see people. I agree with your

right to protest and I share some of the concerns but you have raised,

such as bailing out bangs, but I don't think protesting means that

you can have a permanent encampment for as long as you want on public

space. My advice would be that if you do represent the 99%, you

should have no trouble winning the next general election with a

crushing majority. You will not need anything like 99% of the vote

to form the next Government. My advice would be to focus some of

your efforts on that. That, it is based on a fantasy that we all have

equal access to the population generally. -- that point is based

on. 80% in very clearly to the right and have been very determined

from the beginning to divert that away from the crucial issues that

we represent. The vast majority of people and all the major political

parties have been forced to engage with the issues of inequality and

financial regulation. There are solutions. People have been told by

the same media that there are no solutions. The 20th century have to

do economically. We have the depression, we had the solutions

which brought capitalism under control for the first time in 250

years. We have virtually no crisis for 40 years because the

regulations were in place. We removed them and now here we are.

agree to the right to protest and I don't think the police should take

you away. I think you are effectively turning the centre of

London, one of the great cities of the world, into a middle-class

shantytown. The real problem with that is that you are defending your

right to occupy there but you are a tiny minority of campers. It is

intruding on the rest of the public's ability to enjoy his Ed

Balls and London. Have you been down there? Several times. If

Nadine Dorries is worried about Clunas, then the Government should

pay them a living wage. -- cleaners. When Tony Benn retired, he said he

was leaving the House of Commons to concentrate on politics. It is

movement that changes things and politicians only respond to the

agendas set by movements. When agendas changed, the politicians

have to change, too. Is the right to protest so is he being

threatened in this country? I think it is. -- seriously being

threatened. We are paying homage to the triple A credit rating and we

have to stand up and say this is nonsense and challenged the

political consensus. Your Government was keen to stifle

protest. They cleaned up Parliament Square. A gentleman barracked the

Labour Party conference and he was frogmarched out of the case. This

started in your Government. watched the Iron Lady last night,

and I think the Occupy movement has had some good press, and I think

you are in danger of giving the impression that you are getting a

hard time, but they think your arguments are beginning to resonate

and you should concentrate on that. What you said about the protest

movement can have a huge impact on the world of change. You should be

enjoying the fact that last week all three party leaders were making

speeches that were moving on to your territory. For you to come on

and say it is all about police brutality, thirsty compare

yourselves to the way the miners were treated, and secondly

understand that your arguments are beginning to China and that is

important. But this accelerated under the Government that you

worked for. There was a massive march against the wall. There is a

near permanent protest outside Parliament. There are lots of

balance is going on. I presume whatever we think about Parliament

we do support it being right at the heart of our democracy. The Speaker

has a responsibility to make sure that MPs can get into the House of

Commons. If it is permanently ringed by protesters then that

makes Parliament's functioning impossible. The police then have to

deal with that. I think you guys should carry on making your

argument and I think you have been doing a pretty good job on that.

And you should complain less about the unfair treatment.

difficulty is that the media does not want to talk about the real

issues. Excuse me, let me speak. I think you get enough air time. We

cannot talk about the real issue is because the media does not want to

talk about the real issues. We are not talking about them now, we are

talking about the right to protest. The question is not how to create

an equal society and make places more fair. This is meant to be a

moral ethics show. There are 3000 references in the Bible to money

and poverty. We're not talking about money and poverty, we are

talking about the right to protest. Unfortunately we are controlled by

what the media is interested in. Mark Littlewood, you are screaming

to come back in. I hate to say it but I agree with Alastair Campbell.

Stop the world, I want to get off. The Occupy movement has had

colossal airtime and coverage. You're not that numerous. There are

150 of you at St Paul's. I understand it is difficult

sometimes but you are appearing on programmes and to get a hard time

and people cross-examine you and some newspapers do not write to up

in the words you want to be described in. The amount of

publicity you have had compared to the number of people that you are

is monumental. You have written about this. Is our right to protest,

to get on the streets and to March, two former camp, to say that

something is wrong, we did not gain anything in this country without

being able to do that. Is that being threatened? Everybody has

said that they support the right to peaceful protest. When you look at

what has happened in the City of London, there is Virgin know where

available in the City of London for protest. -- virtually nowhere. The

city has been privatised over the last 15 years. The reason why the

protesters are outside St Paul's is not because they wanted to camp

there. It is the Stock Exchange protest and they wanted to cabin

Paternoster Square but it is private property and so is

virtually the rest of the City. The area around St Paul's is virtually

the only public land in the whole of the City of London. But the

Corporation of London to use as its defence the safeguarding of the

public highway, and to say that they support the right to peaceful

protest, is actually totally hypocritical. There is nowhere in

the City available for public protest because it has all been

privatised. It is not just the corporation. This is a protest we

have seen in all our towns and cities. There are lots of ways and

lots of people that protest in London on almost a daily basis. On

Friday there was a protest by the British humanist Association.

heard about that? Lots of people did. It was on the news. On a daily

basis, people are protesting. people need to be within the City

of London. If we could not protest in London it would be a travesty. I

have been on many much as myself and it happens all the time but

what you say it is not true. There is nowhere else in the City of

London that they can protest. This protest is targeting the City.

Ferris worked for the Met Police for many years. How would you have

I don't see this as any different to sit down protests. As soon as

they sat down, they were obstructing the public highway,

they were removed and that was the end of that. These people are all

obstructing the public highway, I would not have allowed them to camp

there in the first place. The first 10, you would have moved it?

Highway obstruction, very simple, let the magistrates' court decide.

The judgments about the city protest and the Parliament Square

protest, the judge clearly said it is highway obstruction and that is

why he ordered the their removal. We have actually left roads for the

public to get around us. They have got routes through us. We have left

the steps and the area in front of the cathedral clear. We're not

blocking anyone at all. understand that. I was talking to

somebody who sees St Paul's Cathedral as the iconic symbol of

Londoners in the Blitz. He said he has been going there since 1944, he

walks around, he said he has had a will bright to walk around whether

he likes. He said he went they yesterday and he can't walk when he

wants to walk. -- went there yesterday. It is also an iconic

reduce speed -- building, would Jesus have been with these people?

These are tough theological questions, for me, yes, of course

he would. My question to the chap from the Met, we do have moved on

the suffragettes if they were causing an obstruction? They were

moved on. But they went back and they kept obstructing. The people

that moved them on were in the wrong, history teaches us. We will

look back on the occupy movement and realise that these people were

right. I am interested in this theological question that you raced,

or did I raised it? I can't remember. Nadine, you are a

religious person, Jonathan said Jesus would have been with these

people. I am a Christian, but I don't need to be portrayed as this

religious... I do believe in Jesus and Jesus was well known in the

Bible for taking on the Pharisees and turning the tables and Jesus

probably would have been. But I don't think he would have blocked

the steps to the church. They got rid of Jesus, the politicians got

rid of Jesus... When Jesus turned over the temple, the tables in the

temple, it was a profoundly economic point he was making. He

was annoying, he rubbed the political and religious leaders of

his day up the wrong day, he was on the side of right and they realised

they needed to get rid of him as a result. I heard you say, read your

Bible, I love hearing that in a Northern Irish accent. The two

things that the authorities first attacked Jesus for were purity laws

and misuse of the temple grounds. How was he misusing the temple

grounds? He was talking to people about the need to take on the

economic power, to take on the Empire they were being occupied by.

He believed in a passionate revolution, he was not about

violence. That is what this movement is about. There were riots

last year. It is important that we take the energy that is concerned

with changing things and channel it into productive, democratic spaces.

It is not just symbolic, it creates a -- democratic forum. I think

Jesus would have kept out of the political debates. I think his

changing lives was due to the moral heart of values that people should

have. The political debates can go on either side. You can have the

different political groups and the different minority groups fighting

each other, but I think Jesus wanted to change the hearts of the

people. It was the politics that had to fit into what Jesus said.

One of the differences between this protest and the suffragettes was

they had a clear, coherent message. With Occupy, it tends to be the

occupation that is the message. I don't think you have a clear sense

of what you want to argue. I wanted to make one final point about

blocking the route, it is not just the fact that the public needs to

walk around it, it is the fact that you are turning the centre of

London into this grubber a Glastonbury, this middle-class

shanty town which is deeply on present -- grubby Glastonbury.

would rather have a shanty town and loads of bankers doing coke. I am

opposed to lying on TV. We have never got respect. Secondly, we

have routes through for everyone to get through. Thirdly, we do have a

clear message. What is it? Just because you don't understand it, it

does not mean we have no message. What is it? We are anti- corruption

in the banking system and anti- corruption within the government,

and anti- the injustices in the world. Just because there are

multiple things, it does not mean that we don't have a message.

reason we have this camp is because this isn't a simple issue, it is

not about a single law changed. It is about facing a systematic

problem that has got worse and worse in the last 30 years,

democratic deficit which is barely talked about in the media.

Academics have been talking about it, the diva pacts -- de facto

democratic power has moved to the 1%. I am not sure there is one in

the way that Occupy insist. I am very concerned... I am against the

injustices in the world, who would say they are in favour of half of

the injustices? Do you actually have... Because you have been

sitting in these tents talking to each other for some considerable

time, have you actually got two or three coherent, understandable

policy prescriptions that you wish to introduce? No tax havens,

progressive taxation. Stop giving the banks so much power. Start

using debt free money, rather than dead money. The banks create money

and it is automatically in debt. We need the government to print its

own currency and monitor that, so I watched the J Edgar film last

night, it was a fantastic film. There was on amazing scene, I don't

know if it is artistic licence, but J Edgar Hoover is watching Martin

Luther King making the I Have A Dream speech. If you think about

the fight for blacks to get the vote in America, along the way,

there is a big sense of struggle. Voices rise up against them, voices

of authority rise up against them and people keep struggling. I don't

care if they are incoherent, I think a lot of the things they are

saying are resonating, people are feeling that the world is not quite

right at the moment. That is what they should concentrate on, and not

go around saying they are being beaten up by the police the whole

time, because I don't believe they are. Thank you all very much indeed.

If you would like to share your views about that debate, please

visit our website. We are also debating live from the Harris

Academy in Peckham, should governments care about happiness?

And does sex education encourage teenage sex? Tell us what do you

think and send us ideas for future debates, or any general comments

you would like to make about the programme. The government may have

made most of us poorer to pay off the debts, but they are determined

not to make us any more miserable. After all, the best things in life

are meant to be free. Increasing our happiness is going to be at the

heart of assessing every government policy from now on. Should

governments care about happiness? The American constitution has those

fantastic words, Mark Littlewood, one of the most famous political

documents in the history of the world, about the pursuit of

happiness. Clearly, the Government must facilitate that. It actually

says every individual should have life, liberty and the pursuit of

happiness, not that the Senate and the President should organise your

happiness for you. The problem is that when you start looking at the

numbers, and lots of governments in different countries ask you how

happy you are, how stressed you are, and the problem is to try and find

any correlation between those numbers at any sort of government

policy. For example, inequality in the UK has increased enormously in

the last 30 or 40 years. This doesn't seem to have had any impact

upwards or downwards on our happiness caused, which have been

consistent -- happiness scores. There has been a massive increase

in the welfare state, that has not measurably it up lifted our

happiness course. If you can find any correlation at all, by and

large, broadly, and we have looked at data across 120 countries, you

find as people get richer, they get happier. It is not the only thing

that matters, but by and large, as they get richer, they get happier.

Our research tackles this. It is not the only thing. This year, I

probably care more about Southampton Football Club getting

promoted than I do about a pay rise. What about the perception that we

are so much wealthier in comparison to previous generations, but we

don't seem to be happier? numbers for the UK have been

bouncing along at the same level for about 40 years. There are

little ups and downs, but the basic trend is incredibly flat for 40

years. If you are rarely willing to take the leap and say why could

that be, it seems that almost nothing has an impact on it. You

are right, we have got a lot richer. We have also had major recessions

and major booms, none of that seemed to have a particular impact.

We have seen inequality enormously in space -- increase, public

spending increased. This is making Alastair Campbell very unhappy.

said in the introduction, I am with the government on this one. I am

with the government on putting well-being of unhappiness as one of

the factors of the agenda when considering policy. They now --

well-being and happiness. They now have to show they can walk the walk

as well as talk the talk. In this book, there is a graphic of our GDP

going up and up and up, and happiness stays like that. The only

point at which happiness and income appear to be going together is when

people move from a low income, to a middle income. Once you get be on

that, most of the really miserable people I know tend to be very rich

-- once you get beyond that. I think as a government, if they are

serious, back to the Occupy point, the best way to make more people

happy is too seriously understand that gap between the top and bottom

has to be improved, from the perspective of the people at the

bottom 5th. We can trade crafts, we should probably trade books as well.

You can also find there is no correlation between inequality

going up. That is i point. Statistically, what makes us happy?

-- that is my point. Economic growth is one of the drivers. They

are also things, heterosexual marriage... People seem to be

essentially happier. Believing in God, they say. People who believe

in God. I do not want this government or any other government

to start to bring in policies that encourage people to be heterosexual,

married or forcing them to believe in God. You mentioned heterosexual

marriage. Whittled earlier about the importance of protest movement.

I thought -- we talked earlier. One of the extraordinary things that

the last Labour government did in relation to gay marriage, that made

a lot of people happy. People who had been made unhappy because of

the prejudice and the hammer phobia... The Iraq war made a lot

of people unhappy. -- and homophobia. I am heterosexual but

not married. The evidence shows that if you are in a heterosexual

marriage, by and large, you are happier. These are figures that

have been quoted to us are just completely wrong. Completely

misinformed. Just to follow on from Alastair Campbell's point,

happiness has not correlated with increasing growth in GDP, but the

direct correlation that we can see is that as inequality has risen, so

have fear and distrust between people. Fear of crime has actually

sought, and fear of crime is direct... Crime has fallen and

there is a paradox. Crime is relatively low over the last 15

years, and yet fear of crime is right up there. That directly

correlates with the growing inequalities in this massive gap

between rich and poor. Now, fear and unhappiness are very closely

related as well. What we have started to see is the creation of

this far more fearful and unequal society, and the two are absolutely

linked. Last week it was announced that we are probably already in a

recession again. The government is spending �2 million of public money

to look into happiness at that time. I think they should spend some time

showing some real leadership to get out of the economic crisis. This

reeks of a diversion exercise. Let's teach the public that the

good things in life are free, we should focus on happiness rather

than economic growth. I would argue, to defend the right to be unhappy.

I think there are lot of things we should be dissatisfied about. A lot

of things we should be complaining about and striving to make better.

Being told you need to meditate or help people so you feel better is

really problematic. Mark Williamson, you have a list of things that can

make a big difference to happiness. One of which was looking at things

which we should be grateful for. Looking for the good in others.

Trying something new every day, Happiness comes from our attitude

and behaviour and the circumstances that we are run. Individual

behaviour, the way we treat each other, the way we are in

communities, that matters. The Government can influence your well-

being. Regardless of your political views, the Government can affect

well-being and it is right that they should be measuring the impact

of policies on our lives. What other practical tips are there?

There is a huge amount of evidence coming from positive psychology

about what consistently leads to happiness. The economy is a means

to an end, and the end is a good life. It is relationships which

come from a strong community. doing what you have got? The es,

and being comfortable with what you are. -- being grateful for what you

have got? Do we need the Government to do this? When they are being

happiness experts, why does Alastair Campbell no better than us

about what makes us happy? I don't. The way in which Government is

approaching this is not sitting in an ivory tower deciding what makes

people happy. That is very wrong. They are asking the nation how they

feel about their lives, their community, their workplace. That is

great. The crime statistics give you information that allow you to

devise crime policies. If you can get into the British people in a

way that is profound, you really find out what they think about

their lives, that can help individuals and Government make

decisions. At the moment, for every policy the Government has to think

about social, economic, gender impact. Why not happiness? Does

this help people in their lives? Measuring crime statistics is

measuring an objective fact. They are hard to measure. We have just

shown that fear has gone up. are right, but statistics are an

objective fact in crime. There is considerable concern about the

weight of evidence here. It is an objective situation, how are you

feeling? Are you stressed? These are subjective situations. They are

ring-fenced between top and bottom, one to 10. And we can find

virtually no correlation between people's well-being numbers and

anything the Government might do. Isn't this a problem? One person's

happiness is another person's misery. A high-speed train line

might somebody ecstatic and some people will be distressed that the

ancient woodland has been carved up. It is very vague, nebulous and

difficult to calibrate. It is difficult to calibrate but it is

something that you say to policy makers, think-tanks, civil servants.

When you are analysing, developing policy, at least think about the

impact upon individuals and communities and allow it to inform

the policy-making process. G Babar Ahmad some people happy and some

people drug. -- cheap alcohol makes some people happy. And some people

drunk. You bring your own route to the picnic. It is a very subjective

thing. In Bhutan in 1972, they looked at national happiness

instead of GDP. I think the Government is trying to divert

attention. If it was looking at 10% GDP, they would not be looking at

happiness. They are diverting attention to try to find the quest

of happiness instead of improving GDP. I think there is a confusion

here between happiness and well- being. I don't think we are here to

be happy. We will not be happy all the time. We need to know how to

handle things when times are bad. This is why our children are sad.

The focus of the national curriculum has taken away from

strategies which enable us to deal with it. Things like the arts,

religion, origami, crockery, all of those things that the Government is

responsible for have been systematically devalued in the

national curriculum in favour of things that do not bring us

happiness. There is an area where Government can influence it, and

that is to restore some of those strategies within our schools as

things that children will learn. Nadine Dorries, David Cameron is

very keen on this idea. He has been talking about this for some years.

And yet at the same time lots of people are being made very unhappy

by many of his policies. Their pensions are threatened, their

disability allowance being taken away, that makes them anxious.

war in Iraq. There are lots of policies that governments bring in

that people do not like. Whether they correlate to unhappiness is

another thing, I think. That was an extremely good point. School is

where so much happens at an early stage. There is no value placed any

more at some of the aspects of education that actually enriched

and enhance the influencing stage of a child's life, which carries on

until later. And you have stopped academies. There are more academies

and free schools. There are lots. Pimlico Academy, I can name lots.

One in my constituency being built at the moment. A great academy. We

are going of the subjects likely. Subjects like cooking in school,

good history lessons that teach people the value of where we come

from and who we are. All of these things add to the sense of who we

are and purpose. They have been slowly eroded and taken away from

education. But history lessons, that is entirely subjective.

depends what you are teaching. Allowing academies and free schools

to bring these subjects back on to the curriculum and teach them again

will go some way to address this. This is a sticking plaster on

something that is fundamentally wrong, for example the league

tables and the culture of testing. Children competing against one

another, schools competing. It is the same as the catalyst system,

which is based on competition, which is why you get widening

inequality. -- the capitalist system. His is very dangerous to

look at statistics. It is a fact apparently that people in a

heterosexual marriage are happier than those that are not. The other

thing he mentioned were that people that our religious and believe in

God are happy. Why is that? I know lots of miserable Christians! Let's

face it! You should try God. You would feel better. I would hate to

see the Government to encourage people to believe in God because it

improves well-being. Before we embrace the Sabin is economics

staff, let's be very cautious about it. -- happiness economics stuff.

It seems that the people in Burma came out as happier than people in

Sweden. I would be very nervous if the Swedish Government acted more

like the Burmese Government. This lady's hand shot up a while ago.

But morning. There are you happy? am very happy actually. -- good

morning. Are you happy? One of the reasons is that I believe in Jesus

Christ and that makes me realise that so many things in the world

can be seen in a different way. all makes sense to you? Definitely.

One of the points that this lady made which was overlooked was that

we are not happy all of the time, which is true, but the way we deal

with that is very important. My family are from Nigeria and Nigeria

has been topped as one of the happiest countries in the world.

That should be strange, there is so much poverty, but it is the way

that the deal with these problems that is so important. People are

making expressions about happiness and well-being. Of course it is

nonsensical to so that somebody should be happy all the time. This

is not what this is about. Happiness is broader than that,

about relationships, our work life, and meaning. That is why religion

matters because it gives people a sense of meaning and belonging. It

is not about bureaucrats with a clipboard checking that we are

smiling enough. It is focusing on the things that really matter.

happiness means unreasonable optimism, maybe we should have some

realistic pessimism in the City of London. Absolutely. I think there

is a good argument to be made that during boom times we had this

positive psychology driven mindset, that it was always going to get

better. And nobody was going to envisage the possibility that it

could fall apart. I think that is one of the issues with this debate.

Some people did envisage that it would fall apart. OK, I am a member

of the Green Party, but lots of people said that too much choice is

not liberating. When you have the end as pursuit of growth, it will

end in tears. The hedge fund had unbridled optimism. The problem

with this debate is that although governments should look at

happiness, there is a tendency to stop looking at causes. The reasons

why we have come to feel bad about the things we feel bad about. You

can take responsibility for your mood to an been positive. -- adds

to think positive. If the Government really wants to make its

people happy then they should start listening to people and stop lying

to people and covering it up with statistics. Sunday 6% of statistics

are made up on the spot! -- 76%. For me happiness is about

liberation and the freedom to choose what you do with your life.

Being heterosexual, being religious, they make you happy because we live

in a heterosexual religious society. Do we? Yes, we definitely do. I

have been told off for kissing my girlfriend in London. I thought I

would come to London and it would be an open society where everybody

can interact. I realise it is just as segregated as Northern Ireland.

The other issue as well is equality and opportunity. If you come from a

council estate in Liverpool or eaten you still have the

opportunity to do what you want with your life. The reality of a

quality in our society is that we do not have equality of opportunity

because of how much of the wealth is captured. You have written a

book about this, which is surprisingly quite good! One last

comment? I have called the book The Happy Depressive. I am making the

point that we have to embrace both being miserable, which I often am,

with an understanding that part of the job of people in public life

and policy-making is thinking about the well-being and contentment of

others. If they do, they can actually lead to substantial change

in the way we look at and devise policy. Sarkozy is obsessed about

the amount of time front people spend in traffic jams. That may

lead him to devise a better public transport system. It may take him

back to the Elysee Palace as well. He is the President that will no

doubt be driven around in his fat limousine. But for the public, if

the President says that you are spending too much time in traffic

jams, that makes you unhappy and I will do something about it, that is

no bad thing. The European President, rumpy-pumpy or whatever

he is called, he said the book to all of the world leaders at

Christmas about happiness and said let's make this year the challenge

to liberate more happiness for the people that we represent. That is

not a bad place to start politics. Thank you all very much indeed, we

have to leave it there. If you have got something to say about the

greatest gift that we possess, their log onto the website and you

can join in the conversation. Our last big question, does sex-

education encourage teenage sex? If you would like to be in the

audience at a future at show, you can e-mail us. We are in Edinburgh

next week, at Southampton on 5th February, also the week after that.

-- Oxford the week after that. Protest as on Friday were jubilant

that a bill requiring abstinence education to be part of sex

education for girls was not debated. Nadine Dorries has not given up.

The bill will be back. At its roosters our last big question,

does sex-education encourage teenage sex? At -- at its root is

our last big question. I would just like to explain the bill. Young

girls are not spoken to about not having sex. Most of the teenage

girls I speak to feel an obligation. It is almost as societal thing that

if they do not agree to have sex at a young age then they will be

branded as freaks. It is young girls that become pregnant and lose

their place in education. They find it very difficult to get back into

education later. They usually end up pregnant again. They enter old

age in poverty. At the root of his bill was a desire to empower young

girls in schools with the knowledge that you can say no and it is cool.

Where does the pressure come from? Their abbot refer to the opera

scission -- Diane Abbott spoke about pornography in society.

pressure to have sex comes from the young boy that she is with at the

time. Why are you talking about young girls? The pressure for the

young boy to have sex comes from the magazines he reads, the

computer games, the films. I go from school to school and young

girls say that if they do not have sex, if they are averted at 18,

they are weird. If they don't have sex, people think they are freaks

and that is desperately sad. are talking about girls needing to

abstain but girls are not supposed to be the gatekeepers of sex.

as well. On Friday there was no gender title. It is about

abstinence. Teachers should be saying what? Teachers in schools

should be teaching the mechanics of sex and how to have safe sex, which

is absolutely vital. Alongside that we need to have relationship

education and the importance of abstinence alongside teaching

children how to have sex. They should also be told that they do

not need to do it. Can I give you an example? Lay people asks the

teacher in a sex education lesson, aged 14, a group of girls, and they

said that they have a boyfriend who wants them to have sex. They will

think I am weird if they do not. They asked whether they should and

the teacher's advice was this, act in accordance with your wishes and

your feelings. When I challenged the teacher afterwards, why did you

not say that it is illegal under the age of 16 and that she has the

right to say no and it is illegal for the boy, too? And he said that

he was not trained to do it and he only had an hour in teacher-

training. He said that he is not allowed to morally direct, died

these children. The parents? This is another element of the debate,

and we have to bring it into the public forum. Parents at home have

actually absolved themselves of responsibility for sex education to

schools. That is a wholly inadequate place for it to take

It is important that we provide young people with a broad and

balanced curriculum. It is the responsibility of the schools and

the parents to provide this. It is not one or the other's

responsibility. Some parents may find it difficult, and that is why

they look to the school to get help and support. We have the second

worst teenage pregnancy rates in the world... Second only to the

high ridges United States of America. State the obvious, George.

-- the highly religious. commercialisation and the

sexualisation of young girls has been talked about as the will pay

part of their lives. A study said We have a country which is

basically mimicking the US and in so much as we have mimicked their

neo-liberal policies, we have given more free rein to the powers-that-

be to Niblett us in ways that great profit for them and -- to

manipulate as in ways that create profit for them. It gives free rein

of the government to turn schools into hotbeds of social engineering

rather than teaching subject knowledge. Teachers are having the

burden to put on them, not just to teach subjects but personal and

social education, now abstinence. The role that parents should have

is being completely taken away because people don't trust parents.

Our schools are hotbeds of materialistic values. What we have

at the moment is a situation where Michael Gove talks about schools

being places where we create the economic units of the future to

compete in the global marketplace. Is it any wonder that children

write to each other in terms of consumption and want to consume one

another in terms of relationships. Remember what it was like being a

teenage boy? It is all you think about. My wife worked Balshaw start

for 10 years and lost her job because this government axe the

work she was doing -- worked for Sure Start for 10 years. The

government is not looking at a rich provision of education which

encourages children to relate to one another. The Bill deals with 13

to 16, that is way too late, you have to start with the way the

children relate to one another much earlier. Which is where Sweden and

the Netherlands are so spectacular compared to us. In terms of teenage

pregnancy, rates have been dropping in this country. Those countries in

northern Europe with luck teenage pregnancy rates have much better

sex and relationships education and they have parents contributing.

There is no coincidence that in these countries, the young people

report that the well-being and happiness. These are countries

which embrace young people's development, it is part of the

curriculum. What are they doing right, tell us more about that. Are

they communicating in a different way? I think they are being honest

with children and young people about their bodies, growing up,

development, sex and reproduction. It starts in primary school.

Parents are echoing the message is being taught in school. They all

use the same schools as well so you don't have an apartheid in the

school system, that is for another day. I saw a clip of Mary

Whitehouse on the television, when she would warn about the whole

world being taken over by pornography, the sexualisation of

youth. She was right. She was certainly right in terms of the

scale of what has happened. I don't think any of us could have

predicted that and she did. Nadine Dorries is on to something in terms

of the impact of the sexualisation of youth. I think what the

Scandinavians do is treat young people with much more respect than

we do. That teaches them to teach - - treat each other with more

respect. Families are more involved in their children's upbringing and

education. It is family breakdown? I have two small daughters. One is

nine and one is eight. You probably didn't read it this way but I --

mean it this way but I did not like the turn of phrase about teaching

our children about how to have sex. That is something that should be

made criminal at any teacher that teaches my daughter how to have

sex... Don't you think, however you educate these children about how to

have sex, what to do, how about educating them about how to control

their thoughts, their edges. Teach them some self restraint -- the

their urges. That is what the bill was about. What I was talking about

was the mechanics of sex. It is exactly what my bill was about.

Teaching young girls... You put it in a different way, about how to

exercise self-restraint. My Bill is coming from the point of how to

empowered young girls and put them in control. And young boys. It was

My emphasis and I make no apology, is on the young girls who lose

their life opportunities. It is about empowering that and making

them believe that it is not weird to say no, they are not freaks, it

is school and something they should be doing. It is about empowering

them to say no which is reinforcing a moral agenda. It is not about

getting them to think about the nature of relationships, when they

are right and wrong to have sex, and starting get much earlier.

Totally agree. You are a number of this group, Rachel, challenge Team

UK. You have made your decision not to have sex until you are married.

How old are you? 26. Did you feel there was pressure at school,

university, when you were growing up? Obviously, three teenage years

at university there is a lot of pressure to have sex. I made my

decision when I was quite young. I found the sex education I received

in school very one-sided. I had already made my decision but I

found the message I came away from his, you are going to have sex soon,

use a condom and everything will be fine. I thought, what about my

view? Have I got a valid opinion, that I can choose to wait? But I

feel I can be empowered to make my own decisions? There was an

assumption it would happen soon? There is very much an assumption of

that. Challenge team go to schools and do assemblies and presentations

on top of the school's own sex education, looking at the option of

saving sex for marriage. Good- quality sex and relationships

education would never make that assumption. Delaying sexual

activity is one relationship choice, but it has to be put into the

context of relationships. It is not taught in school. It is because we

don't have a consistent policy across schools. Some are excellent,

some are not doing a good job. we had sex and relationships

education like in the Netherlands and Sweden from a much earlier age,

we would have a much healthier situation? Yes, there is a role for

government as well, to say, how is this part of the National

Curriculum within personal and social health education. You can't

leave it he up to an individual school to decide that it is

important because there are high teenage pregnancy rates in my area.

You can't leave it up to an individual school. They need to be

a wide policy across the country which is broad, balanced, includes

the delay but also learning about contraception. This is where the

free schools policy is dangerous. Already, a third of faith schools

opt out of that. We know there is a 10% -- they are 10% more likely to

have homophobic bullying, probably linked. What we need is a

standardisation and a commitment to do it across the board to do it at

a younger age. From an early age, it is about self-esteem and

learning about love and relationships. Some people are

horrified, they think it is all about putting condoms on bananas,

it is not. From two, three, four years old... I have two daughters

and one son, we were talking openly about parts of the body. Sometimes

it got us into embarrassing situations, in changing rooms when

swimming, but that is fine, it is part of the conversation. When we

get this hysteria, particularly from the right wing press, we

actually need to be teaching kids at 5, 6, 7, in the right context.

The Daily Mail website is all about women's bodies and whether they

look right, who is having it off with who in the showbiz world. I

saw the celebrity magazine editors at the Leveson Inquiry, I think

their responsibility is pretty big in this. That is the media a lot of

these young girls consume, and it would all make them feel abnormal

more to be engaging in sex all the time. It is about the

desensitisation of schools, schools don't teach you the full extent of

what the media has pushed on you. Every day... I woke up the other

day, I turn on the TV and Beyonce is there in suspenders and bras.

You go into sex education in schools and you talk about the

engineering of how babies are born. You go home and it is like walking

on eggshells when you talk about sex around the house. It doesn't

make any sense, to have a full impact of sex on TV and media, but

when you talk about it with your parents, it is taboo. Everywhere we

look, there is an overwhelming tide. It is very difficult to deal with.

They have that presumably in the Netherlands and Sweden, when they

turn on televisions? In the context of this debate, it is important to

come back to the question we started with, does sex education

make people have sex? I think we have come to the conclusion that no,

it doesn't. There are plenty of other factors that playing to this.

What is important is that you have conference of sex and relationships

education which you start from a very young age, talking to people

about what a French it is, a relationship is, before you start

talking... What a friendship is. You don't start talking about the

mechanics of sex, you talk about how they can make decisions they

want to make and how they can protect themselves when they make

those decisions. That is not what is happening in schools. I work in

schools, I have seen good SRA -- so examinations at education and bad.

-- sex and relationships education. Why don't we call it relationships

Let's put the relationships first. Let's put the young people first.

This has become a political debate around abstinence. That means that

young people that use that word in the classroom are ridiculed by some