seventy years down the line and welfare spending is the biggest item of government expenditure milking it is so widespread it's become a source of some. you don't exactly have a we're told there would be enormous because you just ability loans at. docklands go croons they really should still be a struggle b.s. if you think you can get managed just ability allowance he's got a bone to see one know which call boehner a genius westminster now wants to make it clear that benefit on to a career path and coming through the doors of your local job and say yeah in and year out filling in a few forms and claiming your money is no longer an option but for people that have been through the experience of claiming unemployment benefit they say it's all too easy to get no money and no one's really checking whether or not you're genuinely looking for was. azzi london coming up in a few minutes are to travel to russia's freezing cold city of murmansk one of the

best places in the world with the astonishing northern lights that's after a short break. through. this friendship believed. to be a packed congress this sunday. not everyone can say they've been on top of the world but if you're in russia you could have better chance than most there are only eight countries on the planet that stretch above the arctic circle and this is one of them and if you go to the right

spot you can see the most spectacular light show on a deal or boy all this it was midwinter and i was taking the secret for the next thirty six hours. but according to this the further north we go the less daylight i'm actually going to be seeing because we should be arriving in moments right in the middle of that poland nights and that is forty days almost total darkness. but up here even when it's pitch black it can still be beautiful. i was heading to a famous observatory and my polar express was well on its way. hi james welcome to the observatory yes but let me give you we've been looking at

the aurora here for law pages come in and make yourself at home and later we'll put you in the picture. they've been studying up here for more than fifty years so i'm never going to have a better chance in russia to see it's them right now i just have to wait. let me show you where our engineers view the information from. this camera takes pictures of what's going on in the sky. we also get information about. high frequency variations in the magnetic field on the field all these phenomena of what's connected to the aurora. in the. area of the. north magnetic

poles. that serves as the source for particles these. are a gift of nature. we see what's going on in. space if you. are a fake being studied in trees you can be seen here in the north if you study the northern lights closely. summarized. it is quite moderate. it's. because it takes. two days to travel from. those permanently days can be very long if you're not used to them and you decided to introduce me to one of the popular local post on. we're not exactly

surrounded by shops out here so for us food in the lab is in role of the sort supply and he has invited me to try a little night fishing so we're going to see. if we can get him by saying. you know people here really enjoy fishing during the long pole and they get so carried away by it that they become oblivious to anything else so if you're lucky enough to catch one you'll enjoy eating it it tastes so good you wouldn't want to eat any other kind of fish there's nothing like it and it was nothing tastier than fish caught in a long pole a night so no pressure then but fortunately jaroslav turned out to be a very good teacher. used.

to let me go oh you're lucky. that's a beautiful fish. but it's a dog fish. it's very healthy because it has all sorts of it's a man's a little hard to find in the winter that's why we see from it and feel it's too and don't fish liver is simply delicious. that big. that's a big fish indeed. we dinna safely stowed away and we headed back to the observatory to check on the forecasts and fortunately the aura can be very unpredictable and it seemed that once again we were going to be out of luck. i could see that everyone was starting

to flag us if we weren't going to see the northern lights at least we could hear about them. and was on them and as. i got about those would know by good though. is must be years. but i didn't do that. unless the knew the good deal name again. love below find out of. the. gorillas. who was there do you good.

don't let you. know. we apes we sang we studied and everyone slept except me i've never been awake more than forty eight hours in my life but up here i just couldn't drop off i put it down to excitement but i was starting to feel seriously unwell and by the time day three rolled around i knew i was going to have to get some help. james must the problem basically i can't sleep and it's been already three nights it's just carry out a few tests then we'll try to help you. must

go to. james to your more or less ok. but it seems that the bowler knight has this effect on you because your level of adaptation has only just breach the norm of a. new c.n.n. . your actual age is thirty four but our one machine after all the tests shows twenty nine books you can do so in a sense you become the younger in the north. moment apprised of that use is not feeling too well. but who are trying to help you with our relics ation methods. you. are searching.

for the one with also why we commend you activate the right side of your brain to st so listen to music don't strike but also stick to a diet try to eat the food that northern people traditionally eat. it seems that. so-called polar stress is very common to visitors at this time of year when it's as bleak and cold as this on the street it's pretty easy to see why . riding a local trolley bus it was clear that i wasn't the only one who was feeling exhausted . i wanted to get better and so was time to take some of my doctor's advice.

the restaurant not only has one of the best views but also serves up some of the best food in moments local businessman has lived here for almost fifty years and has his own theories on how to survive the polar nights. forty days you will get tired of it because they don't know what to do. during the polar night you have to move a lot and eat well of course it's important to eat well and sometimes when you get stressed if you just have to drink one hundred grams of vodka. well they say that overeating can be one of the side effects of seasonal affective disorder but i can tell you now that this is going to make me feel a whole lot better. than

you can see cranberries berries and others all of them a source is a victim and local food is rich in proteins like this. always fresh because it's brought here from where it's bread what you have in your plate is freshly salted salmon and it takes seven minutes to sultan it's my own invention you know as a result of all of it a means of nutrients are preserved and it's a very healthy food. still several cool suze moments suddenly seemed a whole lot brighter although admittedly it's had help from the powers that be to try to add a little sparkle to the docks at the center. of a fishing i've only been working here for about this but we've had four different designs you could order a polar night and i anchor both some fish and waves because everyone loved it but

what's more important these are made with fairly decent so they last for a long time they save energy and are less expensive so we also save money. maybe it was the good food maybe it was the lights and the gigantic christmas tree but my depression of the last few days that i'm going to feel strange euphoria. then my new friends led team it had promised me had another person's way of making me feel better. almost everyone in russia loves a fine yeah buts much like the climate the men of movement make it a little extreme. here we go. let's make believe a little hotter. right

now and this is where i think all options are completely bloody insane. turn around turn around quickly and run back to the money. you know how sometimes you see a story and it seems so you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else and you hear or see some other part of it and realize everything you thought you knew you don't know i'm tom harpur welcome to the big picture.

i was starting to get used to the twenty four hour dog in a soap here in the far north but that's all i was just a tourist more than three hundred thousand people live here year round and many have their own way of making the long winters a little more bearable. if i'm going to tell you about how interior decorations should be fashioned to match

the conditions prevalent in the far north much considering that it's pitch dark outside we have to have as much light as possible inside in this flat we use one hundred ten lamps to provide good lighting. in this flat we used bright colors we have yellow because it's known to affect people in a good way and evoke positive emotions. are used to purple because it's the color of the bride to make still more optimistic. we have many flowers in this flood to create even though the artificial well the feeling of warmth and summer. ok done. much better a. dog outside but at least we've brought

a bit. and if you're looking for really bright buildings there's one that can be seen for miles around. of all the things you might expect to find north of the arctic circle of botanical gardens probably isn't high on the list but it just goes to show that with a little ingenuity anything west anywhere. there are more than a thousand tropical plants here from all over the world and over the years the scientists and botanist have work to adapt to the arctic conditions. also the latest in is a bite out of the right conditions for plants in signed the arctic circle during the polar night are created thanks to special lighting and special lamps this is

done so that local residents can see what plants you can grow and tell themselves that they can always have such plants and their houses to generate a good mood and lots of positive emotions. and if you're feeling that you're lacking that all important little men see don't pick up your very own lemon tree. would dream of here james try real policy lemony grown here in the north well first of all. i say let's keep the scurvy at bay her while. mormans was only founded in one nine hundred sixteen but there have been people living in surviving up here for thousands of years and the sami europe's

northernmost indigenous tribes of the room techniques for getting through the winter. oh which is that the load james nice to meet. you come from far away. anyway welcome will he do some t.v. get you warm and will get to know each other. a lot of these winter nights are very harsh for us we've only got three and a half hours at our disposal. so to begin with we use that time to inspect our reindeer and count them. aside from that we also do some stitching. and we make different things like these little things made from bone used to untie knots we also make bales it's man's work so we do many things with our hands.

but sammy's tradition there are long since moved beyond their villages and for almost forty years they've had their own higher educational institution dedicated to preserving the craft. college has more than one hundred students from across the region who come to study and teach others about the sami way of life they work with traditional materials such as reindeer words. and as my doctor had advised that working the right hand side of my brain would protect against any further polish stress it seemed like a perfect place to get creative. after people were done with household chores like reindeer slaughter fishing and gathering berries in autumn would be due to so many families dedicated their time to working creatively towards

. time to decorate utensils and nine years and other things. and i guess maybe it's the creative work we see today that helps those people to survive jury in those long and cold poland nights. which. i'm just about managed to shake off my polar stress and i've seen how the local people deal with theirs it was time to head back to the observer train i got a call from jaroslav and the overall war was coming out of around two am we drove out and i checked the prognosis with the labs chief astronomer. ok so you know what we have what's been going so this is spitzbergen the koehler peninsula it's got all the way from the north to the color peninsula we should be able to see it at the horizon which is good and this is the color peninsula this is

the southern boundary of the oval for polar lights we can see everything on the map our forecast works everything's great. i set my camera and waited and just under an hour later the most spectacular light show on earth began. wow. this is incredible i can see why so many people say this is one of the few things they want to see before they die. i'm at the top of the world and i feel on top of the world right now. i know people see unusual things in the aura but for me it seemed like a herd of different animals was almost moving across the sky it was one of the most

amazing things i'd ever seen and i couldn't have been more grateful to jaroslaw of sergei and a colleague from n t and she got a. i knew nothing was going to to compare. seeing the northern lights but i still had a few days left before i had to be back in moscow. time enough to take up bloody man on another one of his office. we have a few slips here. one of them is set aside for training. this one is for beginners it's eight hundred metres long. a literal so three slopes the first scares with very high skill levels in the skiing gives you adrenaline and you come here just ski you forget about being tired and sleepy during the long polar night and you go

to work full happy and ready for another day what would you do assuming you don't break your leg of course i don't he been skiing a few times before and certainly never a night still he did say it was for beginners. but he was certainly wasn't wrong about the adrenalin rush and being exactly able to see where you're going so there's a bit of extra spice. it seems that come night or day everyone appears loves their winter sports and it's the theme for this year's snow village one of the region's most popular tourist attractions.

i've actually been covering the winter olympics down in sochi and it's great to see that they're also getting into the spirit of things up here as well quite frankly if the people of the north can ski through polar night then bring me back a few gold medals should be no problem at all. village is designed from scratch every year by a team of talented field is annoyances and each one has the chance to create something close to the hearts. and. worth of well sometimes you're in low spirits you just want everything to go to hell and leave this place for good or you but then a soon as you see the sun's rays again for the first time the depression goes away and you're filled with happy feelings once again you want to live here of all places and once again you become aware of your devotion to this place.

also for the long pole in the us this was the first flights of the new year and i was taking it in with the people who valued it most here over the centuries the sami but with only a few minutes to enjoy it we had to make the most of it ah the sun takes more victims. that shot all. we get ready you know what's going on here let me explain to him stand could be painful stuff didn't have a proxy so they used a stick now we'll find out which of the teams is stronger let's go.

friendship land returns de line just a month with a series of traditional semi games like the strangest in football and when the tourists join in these things can get pretty competitive. last district under. review. the was. not done with the lawsuit. the best.

way to celebrate the first. but. it was time for me to head for the train back to moscow. but travelling through deep snow drifts even in daylight isn't exactly easy unless of course you could a few experts taking the leap. over a course these intense polar nights. but i got to see the aura borealis i must said the first lights of the new year with the sally and i think there's only one way to end my dark old adventure.

science technology innovation all the least developed from around russia we've got the future covered. hold it. hold it. clint. goodspeed. and i. wish i.

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