secretary gavin williams and to raise a made a minority government leader sacking him in the most extreme way possible accusing him of credit being a traitor what was your take on it well i i read the letter and it seems that the prime minister thought she had very strong evidence she also adds in the next sentence there's no credible alternative which i thought weakens the sentence. i find it astonishing that anybody has leaked from such a high powered committee. and. the claims that he should be prosecuted which obviously there may well be an offense here. the difficulty is in succeeding on a prosecution because no journalist worth his salt will reveal what he's been told all that he has been told my view is this the government should seek the advice of the attorney general who is in charge of all the sponsible for the crown

prosecution service he is independent as a prosecutor though he's a collective cabinets of responsibility in all the matters but as a prosecutor he's a dependent and they should consult with him and see whether it's a feasible pop proposition to prosecute can you remember at any time in post-war british politics that loom this century that a cabinet minister could be sacked for such a thing. what i modified it's alleged to have happened and. there have been instances of cabinet ministers being sacked. as chancellor of his check a moment some expression of the journalist of the star athlete sacked him the following day i was over the soviet era but not on those grounds i remember john could. jump of who i was as shadow defense minister i was

a defense minister a long long time ago i find the idea of anyone geeking from such a high powered committee so appalling as to be almost unbelievable because governor williams and denies absolutely all of this and what i think really is a defense ministry you might have met a journalist because williams does say he talked. about what was going on in the meeting between the heads of five and six i suspect he may be one of the few. people present who admitted to talking to the journalist whether there is any other feds other than the fact he is said to have talked to a journalist and may have admitted talking to a journalist whether there is any other evidence i do not know it's twenty years today that the first welsher lections took place but you now want to abolish the westminster job of the secretary of state for wales the job you used to hold and one that you write about of course in this book yes of course why do abortion well

there's no function now where i was secretary of state and i was minister for everything you can think of. i accumulated responsibility for trade for industry for agriculture for the civil service. i was doing of wales in wales i was the minister of all these things i just was and between cardiff and. the present state only as a staff of about thirty. he has no responsibilities his does the propagandist for the conservative party in wales he has no function whatsoever i'm sure he would deny that would you think he would deny what you think alan cans does all day. but here he attends cabinet. at the bottom of the list of participants. flogging the conservative party which is not an easy task. but he's got no

executive functions yet if you could ask if what exactly do you do in the morning on planning on health on transport. we. just electrification of the way to one city we never got it or you could have done to give us the government his colleagues please may we have had no executive response ability and now when i travel to west wales because of the sponsibility is with westminster. i have to wait an hour for trade. to go. i mean that's the importance of the office i'm sure though that though i'm not tourism a secular state for wales they might say look what happened in northern ireland look how quickly if something goes wrong in the devolved problem and one of the nations that make up the united kingdom power suddenly has to return to the

secretary of state as it does in what we've now reached that possibility and i think it's it's not a practical politically there is no argument. against evolution well let's go back to how you started the ball rolling as it were were and how you were first interested by harold wilson for the devolution process that has led to today from nine hundred fifty three i worked on it very lonely job and very low dig having it when you had opposition from all sides and they varied we had three meetings at checkers and the opposition very did each one. of the prime minister led it would never have called school and eventually when i became attorney. i was back of the cabinet committee. many years later and i had the privilege of handing the dummy acts to the queen in cardiff to side in both languages setting up

the assembly at the official state opening and ever since that time her majesty has attended the state openings in both cardiff. because all the opponents tony benn roy jenkins denis healy jim callaghan they're all gone by the way i should say though in the end you do recount all of the politicking in the in the wilson government we now have recent papers that show that there was a fear that there was an attempt to kill prince charles and his investiture could often cause and sixteen there's less of the context of that wilson nationalist. element while you were working on the prose as would turn you into the father of evolution and i was outed best picture there was a very very tiny proportion of the waves for the army i think it was called. which were burning cottages at that time in wales but it was a very very small minority and there was no serious attempt to do anything

significant the burning a few cottages and perhaps i don't know attempting to put a bomb under the trade that i had trouble dog but it was. too poor chaps were killed in their enthusiasm against investiture well now this whole idea of evolution is in the news arguably because it was the intention of the scottish nationalists to call the new referendum do you think you paved the way because of something that you hadn't foresee a situation like bricks it for the possibility of an independent wills. i don't think any of. them is. but if the scots we really want a. weather should have it to test the water i suspect that while you scotsman will not go along sticking to wales i mean there's been quite

a lot of criticism of the labor leadership there for instance when article fifty was declared and that's a call in scotland immediately said we'll take over some of those e.u. roles the welsh assembly went no can take it all. of many wales doesn't seem to be taking many over it but certainly whereas say germany coburn in london is talking about free tuition fees no rental fees child care policy the devolved labor administration is not for policies at all in fact they can tell they've taken millions from aston martin from from amazon. is wales turning into this new liberal center in terms of a nation where britain is starting to move on from that but i think the welsh government i hold no brief for the welsh government. but they're pursuing their

road pauses. they've been for the whole of the period of devolution sometimes coalition coalition now because of the additional members it's very difficult had anticipated this very difficult to get a single majority by any party so the chances are. that there is a coalition and i've just got to finally ask you because it's also the anniversary of mrs thatcher telling the house of commons that there was no truth in that idea is that harold wilson who you give a lot of credit to for devolution no there was no. evidence of m i five either way six and dirty tricks against the wilson government you tend to agree with mrs that's right i would i think i did have a i say they said my new book how did obsession with the bed and the national. and all sorts of people. i think.

god is a very great man. and a very good friend of mine thank you. after the break why owning a dry food may not be the sign of progress you think it is we speak of an adviser to both knew the government's professor. and his every system in life we speak to a journalist and filmmaker who is trip advisor paris fashion week out of the mainstream media. going underground. what politicians do. they put themselves on the line to get accepted or rejected.

so when you want to be president and you. want to. have to write to be press that's what before three in the morning can't be good. i'm interested always in the waters about how. this should all. this is this is a stick from a water bottle phone in the stomach of a fish the brand is spawns of the coca-cola company which sells millions of bottles of soda every day the idea was that let's tell consumers they're the bad ones they're the litter bugs are throwing this away industry should be blamed for all this waste the company has promised to reuse the plastic.

on the. phone now the mountains of waste only grow. join me every thursday on the alex salmond show and i'll be speaking to guests of the world of politics sports business i'm show business i'll see event. welcome back according to a new stage of the nation report social mobility under to raise a maze crisis that minority government in britain has more or less ceased with is there a way to change the distribution of economic advantage and redistribute the profits of multinational corporations joining me now from cambridge massachusetts in the us is world renowned philosopher and former minister in the brazilian lula and dilma governments professor but his new book the knowledge economy is out now roberta welcome to going on the ground so what is your understanding of

a knowledge economy and why has it gone hand in hand with inequality specially in say developing nations nato nations. in every historical circumstance there is a most advanced practice of production the most advanced practice of production we are now able to understand is the one that is closest to the imagination. it used to be conventional industry what we call for dished mass production and now it's something else that we call the knowledge economy or the experimental economy or the new are coming and it is characterized by an intimate relation between science and production the activity of producing things comes to resemble more and more the activity of imagining things and the best for him come to be more like the best schools the knowledge economy has

a series of potentially revolutionary characteristics but it doesn't reveal them fully in its present form because it remains confined to fringe too insular vanguard that exclude the vast majority of businesses and their workers and the consequence of this insularity is on the one hand slowdown in economic growth and growth and productivity and on the other hand the aggravation of inequality now you know it it's most simplistic people are going to say to you you're using this phase insulin vanguard from insula people and got i phones and android phones this vanguard has been democratized that's true that that's a common misunderstanding so one misunderstanding is to associate the knowledge

economy only with it dance manufacture i tech industry in fact it is present in every part of the occurrence. me including intellectually dense services and even perception or scientific agriculture but every part as a friend and the other misunderstanding is to suppose that anyone who buys the products and services of the knowledge economy becomes part of it that also isn't true the knowledge economy is not just a collection of gadgets and the use of these gadgets it's a revolutionary way of organizing work and production for example among among its deeper characteristics that it has not fully developed and revealed because of its confinement are there are these so first of all the most universal constraint in economic life historically has been what we call diminishing marginal returns you

commit and employ or an innovation to the process of production the return to a initially increases then plateau it's and finally falls why the deep reason for that is the episodic or discontinuous character of the new of the nation the knowledge economy holds the promise of sustaining a form of perpetual innovation that loose ends or reverses the constraint of diminishing marginal returns a second characteristic is to bring together our imagination and production and promise a radical change in the relation of the worker to the machine everything that we've learned how to repeat we embody in a formula and then we. put the formula into the mechanical device the point of the machine is to do for us everything that we have learned how

to repeat so that we can preserve our supreme resource our time for the not. it repeatable and then this combination of the machine and the antique machine the human be becomes immensely more powerful than either of them separately i third deeper characteristic of the knowledge economy is a revolution in the moral culture of production the earlier exams practices of production require that generalization of the low level of trashed among the participants and work and there is a command and control scheme it's like a traditional infantry brigade the knowledge economy flourishes on the basis of a height. of the level of discretion and reciprocal trashed among all participants in production and one aspect of the knowledge economy of course is

taxation and a lot of debate about why these big companies don't pay that much taxes perhaps it'll surprise some that you you say the v.a. t. is is the future i don't know whether because of big accounting firms it's that city area now let me explain so one of the major consequences of the knowledge economy is the aggravation of inequality because a chasm opens up between the xander and backward parts of production. and the traditional device for moderating inequality is compensatory and retrospective redistribution my taxes and by social spending so progressive taxation on one side and redistributive social entitlements. on the other side but if the inequality is overwhelming then this attempt to correct it after the fact is very inadequate so the first thing to

understand the bag inequality is that the right way to attack inequality is to change the arrangements that shape the original the fundamental distribution of economic and educational advantage and not simply to try and correct the inequality after the fact through the issue retrospective redistribution that doesn't mean that progressive taxation and social entitle mintz have no legitimate role they do but it's a subsidiary role now on that row we come to the other way in the short term what matters most for the impact on inequality taxation and social spending is not how progressive the tax system is on the revenue raising shy it's. what the aggregate level of the tax take is and how that tax take is

spent i'm just going to ask one final question obviously with the brazilian provenance you work with dilma and with lula do you think some of the inspiration for this book is a revolutionary book came from the favelas anyone who's been to a favela or in a brazilian city has seen innovation and ingenuity well our country has at its most important actor. a tremendous like talent it's this seeding cauldron of human energy as the united states also is and our historical tragedy has been to deny to the majority of our fellow citizens the instruments and the opportunities to turn this vitality into constructive action the great the image the theme of empowerment and the message is let's become bigger together but we can only become bigger together by innovating in the structure of society

it's not enough to humanize and that's what the progressives in the contemporary world and in general done they have presented themselves as the sugar covers as that humanizes of the inevitable humanisation is not enough what we want is empowerment a shared empowerment. a larger life to which we can ascend together and the creation of a disseminated and deepen knowledge economy it's a singular opportunity for the advancement of that liberating project. thank you well what happens when the knowledge economy eats itself journalist and filmmaker who butler who faked a top rated restaurant from a shed in his back garden trick trip advisor paris fashion week and mainstream media and explains how in a new book he joins me now from new york about the welcome do going underground i

have to ask the success of the shed of course indulge the top restaurant in london i understand you're in new york now just to remind us about the shed in using reviews on trip advisor you became number one restaurant yes so essentially i used to live in a garden shed in college like a south east london suburb and i decided to get it verified as a restaurant on trip advisor which i was able to do even though it never existed it was a false restaurant that over the base of six months from april two thousand and seventeen to december. seventeenth i got it number one in the whole of london despite having never served dish and yet using false reviews growth hacking that kind of thing of course when you did your reveal and explain to mainstream media what the scam was i'm sure on looking back at the interviews you did you might have been thinking why did they seem so fearful and so keen to say you're

a corner artist did you detect some kind of fear in mainstream media about what you done i think it's interesting i mean that doesn't stop with the book. i mean are we always going to release the book originally on the twenty sixth of february then the twenty third of march and now it's coming out in the twenty third of april and the book is actually been banned by the singapore government not ban but they the had legal teams from the government saying you should be difficult you should be. kind of careful about publishing this here and the same in the cayman islands they said this is not kind of. in maybe you might get sued which i definitely don't want i would be surprised if it was banned in other places too soon maybe even russia. america i don't know is supposed to be subverting the structures of what it's was unable people to you know it's the book the up one percent don't want you to read said surely you can apply this to any this the tenets the philosophy behind it to

any walk of life and banning it is always you what you probably want because it'll make the book do better arguably did you see why people called you the donald trump of trip advisor in the sense of the insouciance it's a good point. yeah i mean i i think that yeah it's the first step i genuinely just a good way to live though you know not being completely defined by the outcome of what you do and just trying to make this enjoying your life enjoying it enjoying the day to day having fun think that there's i think it's a good way to live many times of the washington post called me the town trip advisor people is that a lot of things when the shed came out you know you had as i said singaporean parliament used it to form new laws on fake news and then really redzepi runs and which is the you know most famous restaurant can because it was a critique of online reviewing coach or food or being coached i mean people said a lot of things but you know this is kind of the philosophy behind the book but on

the shed the book is as you say optimistic but you think it has fertile ground is an audience because there is a feeling post twenty zero eight crash that who do win don't deserve it and those who lose end up at food banks let alone the restaurants you show how to fake a difficult sort of juncture. and then the people could especially at this moment in time do with kind of us trying to escape the. what they're bound to every day in their lives and to try and do some type of cells out there and actually start enjoying themselves is got to be a good thing who is the problem is that and it happened with the shared indulge you did actually have to meet people and what about the what about the dimension of class here if you'd been. someone say laid off for many factoring in britain from a working class background white working class in your fifty's would it have been

difficult to persuade the kind of. the elite that you indeed would the guy had the best restaurant it would definitely have a sense of privilege anyway but i'm not you know on the youngest of six didn't go to university i grew up in a tiny house and we all shared bedrooms so i really think part of that. i wouldn't call myself part of con and as most a lot of journalists. and people are now unfortunately it's like in terms of class it's quite. there's not much representation in terms of working class people. and i yeah i mean i i think that having the ability of just. both really invaluable whole and i think. that that wouldn't just be exclusive to people who come from a privileged background but to anybody about the thank you and how to blow away the

number one is out now available through web publications and that's if the show will be back on wednesday speak we can only get five days a week a shot of charles the john mcdonnell about creating a britain where people no longer stalled but until then even touched by social media. during the great depression which i'm old enough to remember there was most of my family were unemployed working class there wasn't it was bed you know much worse objective listen today but there was an expectation that things were going to get better. there was a real sense of hopefulness there isn't today today's america where shape by the

turn principles of concentration of wealth and power. reduced democracy attack solo doubt engineer elections manufacture consent and other principles according to no i'm chomsky one set of rules for the rich opposite. that's what happens when you put her into the. narrow sector of will switch will is dedicated to increasing power for chills just as you'd expect one of the most influential intellectuals of our time speaks about the modern civilization of america. after the previous. vision of my career was over everyone wondered what i was going to do next the multiple different clubs on one hand it is logical to sit in the

home fields where everything is familiar on the other i wanted a new challenge and a fresh perspective i'm used to surprising people and us old or not serious. i'm going to talk about football nazi or else i just think i was going to go. by the way ways of the flooding here.

all forty one bodies of the people who were killed when a russian plane burst into flames during an emergency landing in moscow have now been recovered from the crash site among the victims are a twelve year old girl and the flight attendant who died helping passengers escape the inferno. investigators are currently looking at three possible causes for the tragedy pilot error systems malfunction and bad weather. israel and palestinian militant group hamas reportedly call it truth after a weekend of deadly exchanges which saw nearly.