and because we are all about the politics and less about the economics, we have roped in some expert help. we have got stephanie flanders from bloomberg economics, friend of the podcast. hello. hello, hello. and another friend of the podcast, claer barrett, from the financial times. hello! thanks for having me. i'm glad you're here, so, interest rates at 3%, stephanie. for those of us who aren't steeped in this, what is the economic theory about why interest rates have to be that level right now? so, you have prices going up too fast. we all know that, inflation. and one of the ways that you can sort of bring down inflation is to have less demand in the economy and one of the ways that you get less demand in the economy is by cranking up interest rates so you're making mortgages, the loans of people on variable rate mortgages have less money in their pockets and have got less money to spend so, in theory, the economy slows down. and, claer, that is the kind of macroeconomic stuff, butjust give us a sense of how that feeds into real lives. in terms of money, there's around

2 million people in this country who are on a variable rate mortgage who will immediately see the impact of that 0.75% rise we have had today. the biggest since the '80s or '90s depending on who you believe. and for somebody with the average size mortgage, just from today's rise, but of course, that's the eighth rise we have had in succession from the bank of england. there's more pain to come for around 2 million people you roll off their mortgage fixed rates next year. they might see an even bigger rise because they're on a really low rate now and it'll probably be higher than it is next year, so again, somebody with the average size mortgage, they can expect to pay around £250 more per month, or £3000 a year, and that's based on a mortgage of 130,000 so obviously if you have a bigger mortgage, you will have bigger repayments. trying to work out from listening to the various contributions we've heard

today, whether it be andrew bailey at the bank of england orjeremy hunt the chancellor, labour's response, about, clearly, there's lots of bleak language being used and clearly it is pretty bleak, but how bleak it's relative to expectation, so i'm thinking about, there is lots of talk about this being the longest recession ever recorded, but then, how deep is it going to be, and interest rates are going up, but how high might they get? there's another weirdness about this which is that at the same time that we're talking about a terrible squeeze and a recession, we're not really looking at rising unemployment, so what we think is historically associated with a big recession, lots of people losing theirjobs, you are definitely not seeing that. you still have an enormous number of vacancies and not enough people people to fill them. a smaller labour market now, smaller number of people working or even wanting to work than before covid so, it's an odd mixture, and we have not seen that since the '70s, just the higher prices without necessarily the economic pain yet. we're looking at more economic pain, going down the next year and a half, and, as you pointed out, it looks like it could be a long period where the economy

is technically shrinking. might not be shrinking that much. what i thought was pretty devastating about the forecast today, lots of uncertainty about where we end up but if it's anything like that, and of course it could be worse, we could have a steeper recession, then we will end up about 10% smaller, the economy, than if we'd just carried on our kind of expected path before covid. claer, i saw that you were posting on instagram with your laptop ready for the announcement from the bank of england at lunchtime and i was actually on the train... you're always on the train! well, i've got to get to work somehow! and so went on the website of the bank of england to look at the monetary policy report, and you then get pages and pages of detail, and there's a graph and if you zoom in on your phone, you can see the economy is going to be flat for the next year. that's basically what they're saying. it's pretty depressing. stephanie was saying with a recession you would expect there to be pain in the jobs market and,

obviously, that brings worse uncertainty for people who've got mortgages. the worry at the moment is inflation and rates going up. could the worry in the future be not having a job to earn the income, to pay the mortgage? the group of people i'm more worried about at the moment are renters. there's lots of focus on people who have got a mortgage. they're the lucky ones, they're going to end up owning an asset even if they pay a bit more for it than they have been used to for the past few years, but renters will get that pain passed onto them from buy to let landlords who have higher rates of interest on properties that they're renting out. lots of them are also thinking about quitting the market. there's rental record demand, and people are having to pay more and more and they're not going to get anything at the end of it. chris, all of this kind of real—world impact is happening, or about to happen, to some people. we're politically in a bit of a holding pattern, because we are waiting for this autumn statement in two weeks. there's this weird sense i at the moment of relative political serenity.

everything's relative. there's still pressure l on the home secretary and all of the rows that we - have talked about on newscast in the last few days, _ and obviously, these bleak kind of economic clouds. but at the moment, pretty much any answer, any question to - the government about anything they're going to do, certainly. anything that is economic, - which is pretty much everything, everything is deferred to, well, wait for that budget i moment in two weeks' time. at the moment, the government is making a virtue out— of being boring and saying - nothing given that we have just had a few months of kind | of fireworks, but it seems to me, give it a couple _ of weeks and get to that moment and there are difficult - decisions for the government to make and i think politics then sparks up again, - and then the fascinating thing is, who do people blame. _ and particularly, when you listen to the bank| of england governor today talking about, you know, i it's easier to lose confidence than it is to regain it, - and talking about, bluntly, - what happened under liz truss and kwasi kwarteng, it seems to me much easier for peoplel to blame the government, fairly or otherwise given i

what's happened since the summer, than it might have _ been, had that period not - happened and the government had been able to point, as they still will, i to the international picture i that is obviously still a huge contributor to the| situation we're in. stephanie, help me work out this mystery about how much of this fiscal black hole is going to have to be filled with spending cuts and tax rises. actually, it was always going to be there and no one really told us about it, and how much of it is a direct result of what's happened over the last couple of months or, is it impossible to actually work it out? it is pretty impossible to say. one thing that did happen, you look at the forecast for the last time the office for budget responsibility did forecast six months ago, obviously, the cost of borrowing has gone up a lot since then, not all of that, in fact most of that, has been a global phenomenon, notjust the sort of the liz truss, trust the "moron premium", as it was called in the markets! in the markets, this has been a term among investors. i cannot comment on it, but that's

just a phrase that's used! that was the idea that the markets looked at liz truss and kwasi kwarteng and thought these people do not have a clue what they're doing, we're going to charge them more to lend them money. which at one point, was £20 billion a year, so not nothing. that has gone away, but i think there is a really important cost that you can absolutely pin on that period. if you're rishi sunak and you're looking at a really uncertain situation and you know that you have got a bit of a hole, but you don't know how bad the economy's going to be and you don't know what the world's going to look like in a year's time, far better to delay some of the pain, to use your credibility to delay some of the pain or to do slightly less than you need to do in the end. he has much less room to do that now because the one thing that can happen is, he can't sit down and have investors start questioning, have the same kind of reaction or even half of the reaction they had to kwasi kwarteng's budget. so, that has been the real cost, that he does not have the same room for manoeuvre, and i'm afraid that means, if anything, he will end up overdoing it, doing more

tightening than actually make sense, in an economy that is actually entering this very weak period. claer, i wonder from a sort of consumer perspective, i when you're answering queries from readers who are saying, i what can we do in this situation, the agencyl of the individual in a bleak economic situation to try. and lessen the impact. a lot of people who've got large mortgages and a few years to go on fixed rates are thinking, can we overpay, can we take advantage of the fact that rates are low now, and try and get the loan—to—value ratio of our property down so that when we come to remortgage again we can get a better deal? stephanie, on yesterday's episode of newscast, available to listen to now on bbc sounds, we did a little sort of supermarket conveyor belt gimmick about the increase in the price of stuff, and it's things like dog food going up 30% and vegetable oil up 40—something per cent. did the bank of england have anything to say today about when inflation might go back to normal? they have it tricky. they're also having to wait to see this fiscal package

because, remember that two—year energy price freeze, the one thing that was going to do, the two—year freeze on households, that was going to cost a fortune and that was creating more of a hole a few weeks ago. but it was going to have a big impact on inflation and was basically going to mean that inflation would keep going down from now, and the fact that it technically only lasts for six months means, if you take the government seriously or you take the current policy seriously, of mini peak quite close to this one, near double digits in the middle of next year, but even the bank of england doesn't think that's going to happen because they think the government's going to end up helping households again. i'm afraid that's what makes it confusing about inflation. if you look two years down the road, the bank of england is expecting that even these interest rates they might be more or less close to their 2% target which is great news target, which is great news if they hadn't been forecasting that for the last four meetings

and got it wrong every time. claer, i got a notification from my energy company today that i got my £66 from the government to help with energy bills overwinter. do you have any intel about how that's working out the people? yes, we do. most people get it automatically. you pay by direct debit. people who have got smart meters but are on a prepayment meter, they also get it automatically, and the people who need to do something are those who take their prepayment card to the shop to be topped up. now, you will get a voucher for £66 for the post. lots and lots of people haven't cashed in those vouchers, which is a really big worry because they're the people who need this money more than anyone. is it because landlords of properties have got the meters registered to their home addresses, and not where the tenant lives, so the money isn't getting through that way? is it because people don't realise that they expire within 90 days and haven't taken them to the shop? you know, anyone with a prepayment meter, please tell them about it because they really, really need to get the cash on those cards before the winter gets cold.

as someone who has tried to spend 20 years trying to tell british gas that i don't have a prepayment meter that was there 20 years ago before the house was renovated and everything else, i know, i'm worried that even just the information about who has a prepayment meter... i got my voucher and we haven't had a prepayment meter for 20 years. so i worry about the accuracy of who it has been sent to. so, their it might be a bit creaky and that has a knock—on effect on people's lives. these are the ones who need the cash. i don't need the cash. donate the rebate, that's a hashtag campaign that has been started. give it to a fuel poverty charity if you don't need the money. claer, thank you for giving us your thoughts tonight. thank you for having me. and lovely to see you as well, stephanie. thank you. now we're joined by comedian, writer, actor and, iwant to say american, rob delaney! you may. but you'll be able to hear that he's american. hi, guys, thank you. we know you from watching shows like catastrophe, where you make us laugh. like, this afternoon you were making me quite sad

because i was reading your wee book, a heart that works. it's about the death of your very young son, henry. yeah. i'm finding it hard to summarise it, because i think anything i say will be really glib or worse, insensitive to you, the person who's gone through it. so why don't you tell us? i can summarise it for you. it's about my son henry's life, and death. there, i think ijust summarised it. yeah, he died a little before he would've turned three in 2018. he had a brain tumour and they took it out surgically, which disabled him. and then he was getting chemo for a while and treatment, and he didn't, you know, have cancer on paper as far as we knew for a while. and then it came back, and it killed him. that was 4.5 years ago. and of course, it transformed our lives very dramatically, my wife, and his brothers. and i figured, as somebody

who is in the public eye, for better or worse, if i told that story, it might help out other bereaved people. and when i say bereaved people, i mean, like, bereaved parents and siblings. not grandparents, i don't care about them, or dogs, but the heavy duty ones. that was why i wrote the book. what it made me realise is, obviously, the grief and the loss is absolutely awful. but the actual caring can be kind of beautiful, and almost nice. 0h, beautiful is the word for it, yeah. we had to learn a lot of stuff to take care of him because the surgeons, when they took out his tumour, they did an amazing job. but because the tumour was wrapped around his brainstem and cranial nerves, he was quite disabled, and so one thing that happened was that he had to have a tracheostomy. and when you've got a kid that young, you've got a one—year—old

at the time with a tracheostomy, taking care of a child like that is very difficult and there's a lot of stuff you need to learn. so we had to do all that stuff. and it was scary and difficult to learn, but we did, and that became part of how we cared for him. and, man, i miss it now, as difficult as it was and as bloody as it was sometimes. it was a privilege to do. the sheer intensity of the experience you had to go through in such a short period of time — i have children of roughly the same age and the intensity of the love, the magnitude of the birth and the anticipation of the birth — and then so soon after that, you having to deal with something just one million miles emotionally from that, but then wrapped up in love, followed by grief — my goodness. yeah, quite a stew of emotions and experiences.

and you're right, it wasjust before his first birthday that we started to see symptoms. and so, i talk about in the book — i was so excited for him to turn one because he was our third and one is such a special age because you can do everything — one—year—olds can do everything we can do, except talk — you know, they babble — and hoop in a toilet — and poop in a toilet — they go in their trousers. so, they're amazing. they're very special, and we learn a lot about ourselves in the way we interact with them. so, i was so excited, i was like, "oh, my god! "i'm going to have another one—year—old!" and days after his first birthday, he had his surgery and became a very different kind of one—year—old and he sure taught us more than your average one—year—old and two—year—old. young kids, it's such a physical experience, because they need you so desperately and bodily.

you're constantly carrying them. that's the other thing about it because when an adult has a condition like this, it's then about the things they could do that they then can't do, and they know the difference. but he didn't, so he just grows around his condition. yeah, he really did. so, he knew he was in pain. he knew he was out of sorts. but he was 11 months old, you know? and at one, right away, he had the surgery. and then, you know, there's brain damage from that, and body damage and, so — but i think the only time you go faster than one to two is zero to one and so, it was such a time of learning and growth — and he absolutely did learn and grow, but in his own different kind of way. because one of the things i've been struck by as a parent, particularly of children of that age, is that you imagine because they don't have the capacity to articulate

everything that they're experiencing, you imagine how they're experiencing a situation that you can articulate articulate and wondering how they are processing that themselves. and i can relate to that on a trivial level with my own children and yet, you went through it with the intensity of the emotion that you were feeling and your family were feeling and then, i guess, wondering what he was feeling. yeah. — you do wonder, you know? and you can — we can legally speak for our children, you know? we can medically make the decisions for them. but in fact, they are vast, multifaceted beings, you know? in henry's case, yes, his brain stem was damaged, but his frontal lobe was not and he was very bright and inquisitive and curious and funny and mischievous. so, he had a rich life, inner

and outer and, you know, we go — we have our versions of what he may have thought and felt. he learned makaton, a type of sign language, so we communicated, certainly. but yeah, the depths of what he felt and knew, that's his business. i'd love to know. there's a hilarious bit where you see the two makaton superstars from the hospital tv channel in the cafeteria. yeah! "0h, can i go and speakto them?" oh, yeah. also, the joke about you being american but that's because in the book, you're constantly contrasting the nhs that we have here versus the care you would be getting in america and having to feel for your wallet on the way into the hospital reception. yeah. i mean, a big gift that the nhs gave our family is time, because we didn't spend time on the phone with private insurance companies saying, "please, please approve this

"mri" or "hey, i went to the pharmacy and they were "going to charge us $615 for a bottle of liquid", you know? so, we didn't have to do that. in america, when you get sick, even if you have private health insurance that you pay a lot of money for, you have those conversations and you lose that time. and i don't want to hang out with an insurance functionary in an office tower in salt lake city on the phone. i want to be with my son who's dying. so, the sort of mercy and the grace that the nhs affords people in their darkest moments, i now have touched the beating heart of it and i'm very grateful for it. it's interesting for us as politicaljournalists because we're used to the hearing arguments about the nhs and efficiency and how much you spend on it, and then some people in the political world looking at different models with a bit more private involvement. i don't think i've ever really thought of it in terms of the model that we have means that you have time with your relatives. and you can't put

a price on that. now, when i negotiate forjobs after henry's death, the thing i negotiate first is time and how long i might be away or what it requires. then, if i'm happy with that, i'll move onto money, because time is more important to me now. the other amazing thing about the book is how many kind people there are out there. oh, yeah. and a lot of them work for charities. yeah, yeah. do you think as a country, we've got the balance right between the support you get from the state and the fact that you then have to rely on charities for the rest? no, i absolutely don't think the balance is correct. i think charities are wonderful and people are going to have the instinct to do that all the time and they should have the structures in which to do that, but a big one for us — and i talk about it in the book — not too much, because that could be a separate book, but our son, like a lot of people, spent more time living in the hospital than he needed to. he was well enough to go home, but there wasn't the care

in the community. so, this is a very strange thing to me, because him home would have cost the government exponentially less money, so... and freed up the space for someone else. yeah, it's very odd to me! so, like, if i were a lower—case c conservative, i would be thinking, "wouldn't i like us collectively "to be spending less money?" so, there's a dire, deadly — and deadly, because it kills people — problem with social care, and that should be addressed for the health of the nation and its inhabitants. so, that's something bad that s happening right now, and i would love to shed light on that so it can be addressed. but are charities doing wonderful work? oh, my god. i'mjust, i'm beaming right now thinking about the wonderful charities. i wonder where this whole experience — and even describe it in that way sounds glib, for which i apologise — but i wonder, given what you've

lived through, where it leaves your outlook on comedy. is that a harder place for you to get to, or is it the wonderful escapism which, as a viewer, i might turn on and enjoy seeing you doing something that's funny? is it a harder place for you psychologically to get to or an even more important source of escape? well, i love that question. it's not glib at all. and it's more important to me now. it was always important but now — it's interesting,, because my career in comedy has become right—sized, which is to say it's not the most important thing in the world but it's not the least important thing in the world. because i used to be embarrassed about what i did and i would denigrate it and be like, "it'sjust stupid". because it seemed glib and unimportant? but it, in fact, isn't! it's as important as the people who built this table, who would fix that light if it broke, who will drive us home on the bus. because it's part of the human condition. it's a craft that people need.

like, if you went home after a rough day and wanted to put on your stories and they weren't there, you would be upset. you don't want to watch schindler's list every night. or you wouldn't have a funny book to grab or whatever. so it's no more important and no less important than everything else. it's given me a good perspective. on that note, there are two bits where i probably laughed out loud — i hope you didn't expect more, or have i laughed enough? — and i'll tell you the two bits so you can share the stories with our listeners. phoning up the automated phone line in great ormond street to get through to the ward that your son was on. mm—hmm. yes - so, the oncology wards at great ormond street are understandably named after animals that kids enjoy, and one of them is giraffe. and i — they have this automated system where you call up and rather than punch in a number, which i would vastly prefer — i was born in 1977 — but you say the thing. "which ward would you like to be connected to?" "say the name of the ward".

so i would be like, "giraffe". and they would be like, "i don't understand," you know, and i'd be like, "mmm, giraffe. "ger— raffe". and finally, i would be like, "oh. "0h, iget it. imitates posh british accent. "giraffe". and then they were like, "ah, yes, here you are, giraffe. " and one of the worst things you can say to somebody is, "let me know if there's something i can do". not the worst. not the worst, ok. but that's more for you than them. "i've ticked that box and now i can go and watch darts". no, it's — yes, there is something you can do. it is make a mediocre casserole and ring the doorbell and then run away. or come over and massage my feet. they hurt, ok? i've been standing in hospital for a long time. or i've just walked to file my son's death certificate. i'd like a foot massage. and you can even clip my toenails. rob, thank you for writing the book, thanks for coming in and and also thank you for making it easy for us to talk about this subject, because it's not easy stuff to talk about. well, you guys are great. i appreciate it. thanks so much. thanks very much. cheers.

so, next week, you're off to egypt for two days to go to cop27? yes, so i'm going to experience the climate change conference thing that you had in glasgow last year, which we're going to have in sharm el—sheikh after the prime minister decided that he wasn't going to go, then he might go, and then he will go for his — what will be his first foreign trip as prime minister and first chance to meet — oops, fellow world leaders. you're so excited about your trip to egypt, you're... i'm whacking the microphone. in the next episode of newscast, i'll be chatting to alok sharma, who's the cop26 president who will be handing over his gavel to the next person this weekend. so, listen in to that. thank you very much for listening to this episode. we'll be back very soon. bye. newscast. newscast from the bbc. hello there. for much of the country, today was a dry and sunny day, but it's turning quite cold right now, especially for

eastern parts of the uk. out to the west, things are changing. we've got a big area of low pressure in the atlantic, and swirling around it, this band of cloud on that weather front there. and that is moving its way in from the west, so we're seeing the cloud increasing and rain pushing in from the atlantic. but ahead of it, one or two showers coming in off the irish sea, and the showers in scotland retreating towards the northern isles. western areas sees the cloud thickening, that rain arriving. eastern areas still dry. these are the temperatures by the end of the night, but before then, we could see temperatures even in eastern england getting close to freezing once again. so, a chilly start for eastern areas where it may start dry first thing, but that rain moving very slowly eastwards, probably turning lighter and more patchy. we get some sunshine coming into northern ireland quickly, and in the afternoon, some sunshine across much of scotland. for many parts of england and wales, though, it may stay cloudy throughout the day. there may not be an awful lot of rain around at all, and temperatures may be a degree or so higher than today at 12—14 degrees. bonfire night tomorrow night, and we could see a bit more rain hanging around across south—eastern

parts of england, perhaps the midlands. and then we've got a few showers in the far north—west, but for many parts of the country, it will be dry and we'll have some clearer skies for a while as well. but those showers that are coming in towards the north—west are coming in around this area of low pressure that's getting a bit closer to the uk. that weather front, though, that's bringing rain into england and wales is going to hang around in the south—east, and overnight we could get some heavier rain actually. and that rain still around across south—eastern england on sunday morning. and then, following on from that, we're going to find some more rain pushing its way eastwards across england and wales. further north, maybe the far north of england, but certainly scotland and northern ireland, it's drier. there'll be some sunshine, and there'll be fewer showers. but it is turning quite windy, and those temperatures not changing much on sunday. stronger winds are coming in towards the far north—west of the uk, close to that area of low pressure. that then spins away. we get some more weather fronts trying to come in from the atlantic, mainly pushing wet weather northwards up the western side of the uk. and ahead of that, we're going to find the winds coming from a long way south. it'll be windy on monday,

but it's going to be very mild. we're likely to find temperatures widely getting up to 16—17 degrees in england and wales. once that rain moves through overnight, it's going to be a little cooler on tuesday with sunshine and some blustery showers.

strikes due to start on saturday this is bbc news with the headlines.... there's been a sharp rise in the number of albanians crossing the english channel in small boats this year — we report from albania on what's behind it. locals in this neighbourhood say 70% of the community has already left, and many of those living here now are thinking ofjoining them.

here in britain, a series of train