believes that the country is fed up with bricks it begs it should still command interest perhaps it's just the politicians that the people are fed up with it is still a thirst for insight analysis that is no longer provided by the mainstream media that vacuum has been filled by the political bloggers and they come in no shapes and sizes but command vast audiences in the cities we look at the faces behind this new media left right and center what makes them tick and what brought them into the new world of political blogging for our first program we'll look at a new entrant and the blogging top ten as measured by the p.r. software company who will you know and that is create money we find a back story which is both fascinating i don't many ways a testimony of our times this blogger was once the ultimate insider as her majesty's and pastern tashkent now he is well i say the establishment delivering

scathing critique of the diplomatic world he wants peace through it i decide that we had to go public on the human rights abuses that were calling including one instance of of a gentleman being boiled to death he was boiled alive literally and i've got pathological proof from the university of glasgow but first your tweets messages and emails in response to the final part in our cities are knife crime in london faces the destruction of communities created by the tories and allowed to continue by labor is a result in this and both parties should be held accountable however they're only interested in the upper class and the rest of us are expendable doogie says but what about victim compensation these thugs get community orders and compensation orders they don't do the community service and they ignore the court's compensation orders. levy says exactly we have to listen of course she's referring to the pastors who said that the listing to the perpetrator is

a famous one we are getting out of that terrible rut but levy says exactly they have to elite know someone who can't lead that'll never work my cousin was knifed because of the color of his skin we never forget these kids need someone like this man to max says the difference between scotland and england scotland has a government intent on investing in its people england has a tories and cash back is not a freeze associated with them susan says a brilliant cd's and inspired finale though the issue rumbles on there's such hope in the shows and finally cast says very informative showing that scotland is ahead of the game once more. now craig money was once the ultimate high flyer they understand buster and the british foreign office offered august by her majesty the queen herself i was offered an officer ship in the board of victorian order which is a medal in the personal gift of the queen i was offered a left turn and purple

a tendency to do all that toil in order while i was in poland and i was promoted and censored offered to be a commander in order while i was in ghana and on both both occasions i was fused from royalty to radicalism now quick money is one of the most experienced of political bloggers writing a commentary which attracts up to one point two million readers how did this transition come about alex takes up the story with craig mighty. and now i'm delighted to be joined by ambassador extraordinaire and no blogger extraordinary mr clegg money create wealth of the examen sure thank you very much for having me about your sis big quake the extraordinary career but start with or start the beginning i mean people who know you played many of the things your rate of your advocacy a scotian the bareness you know have you mark down as a as

a pretty at the dethroned scott allowed to peer but actually you were born and not for. auntie i was born done in norfolk my father's remember. was posted down there in the air force where he made a local go and settle down for a while so i'm i'm half scots and half english and born in the thick and going politics pretty early age min reading the codes of your life but the generally thought then the leader of the liberal party of all of all generally thought the his private set to receive the letter than the porch because that's what they did in these days and the gist of the run up to the fair been for the likes of what was i but that's right i decided i was a liberal. i think fourteen years old and we didn't have a candidate in north norfolk we didn't have a constituency association so i voted german for parking him to send

a candidate and his private secretary who was richard moore opened the letter and having no constituency i'm self helped on the train and came to fight the election when he arrived and found that or a young teenager was what more than a constituency association he was where he actually go i was just fifteen earthing . that's the present journey for private set for westminster because those of us were never exerts. the sedes that he will be that card that it was the. we're to do things right to surprise the book the trade station looks for the deputy asian to greet them all arrival and favors the school the leper how did your marriage than the letter of your your age of innocence not now happened and then fact i'd as you arrived at the station i just come off the school bus i was in most school uniform with my factor as well but he he took it all in in very good part from that standing start how did you go on an election campaign we did not too

badly i think we actually. came third. a w managed to overtake the labor party which was the game but we thought that the memory would got something like eight hundred twenty percent of the vote for most of the world must of enjoyed the experience because he stood a gallon at the top of the. state is that by then did you have a bunch of lincoln states association we certainly did but we attracted lots of members we revived the constituency association frankly a lot of members were older than i was and it was really my introduction to politics and actually richard moore taught me a great many of the political principles in which i still believe he was a very good liberal man with both a large and a small and then off to done the university it was up because your of your father's connection for you are second generation scott yes i went off to a done deal and i was still active in the bill politics there and you've got out of

student politics and if i read collector that was a change in the rules of the student association by the university to stop you standing for the thought of town as late get franklin d. roosevelt or those that the have to be a constitutional amendment to the stop being a perpetual student open. to sabbaticals as president of the student union university was terrified i was going to do a third it wasn't just a constant use them student union they had to change the university charter itself and get the queen to sign. not on the change which was fascinating i had it's worth saying no intention whatsoever of standing for third term anyway because i'd managed to get a job enough on the office but they just in case they weren't taking any chances well the foreign office and i went through the government economic service at sam's and indeed the treasury. reputation for. looking at. people not basically dismissing the people who might be considered an awful dogs

but looking for for brains as opposed to conformity in these days do you think that it's gone from the civil service no it would be much more difficult to get in if you have political views let me put it that way after i left the foreign office attended mine still in the senior position in the office was invited to a meeting to discuss the. case and he went along thinking that it might be discussing you know how you avoid making false allegations against one of your stuff or all some of those things but in fact it turned out to be a meeting on how to ensure nobody like the other quarter before to look for. me and say let's get back to your methods talk to your year old near the top of the fly through the foreign office examinations and there and then your national postings as a civil servant young foreign office. opposite of paul and then ghana's or

the highlights of your of your a suggestion and ball and opponent was absolutely fascinating because it was going through the transition from communism to capitalism in effect i was in the early nineties and it was a time of the normal opportunity you know new businesses were burgeoning up people were enjoying newfound freedoms but also there's a terrible sadness that a whole generation of people who had been brought up in the. communist system lost their way you know there were literally hundreds of thousands of people laid off from heavy industry for example who would never work again economically people were in real poverty and starvation almost it was a bit like what happened if you can under factories and but exaggerated still far far worse so it was very very interesting time to to be there but also

quite quite complicated the time and both of hope and of despair depending on who you were in society or under her majesty's service you had your first direct contact were from maj herself and paul and i think of prince charles and gallant which was your what are your next postings why we can vote in the royalty of your views i had to organize state visits for the queen both to poland and to garner while i was in those countries purely by coincidence of state visits happened to come to both countries while i was was there and organizing a state visit you actually end up getting quite close to the queen and of your family and so the this this must have been accorded something of a success because you were you were offered. some royal acknowledgment tell us about that and the particular tell me why you didn't accept it now i was offered an officer ship in the royal victorian order which is

a medal in the personal gift of the queen i was offered a left tenant ship perth all a tendency of your victorian order while i was in poland and i was promoted and so to the offer to be a commander of all victorian order while i was in garner and on but both occasions i refused and the other inquiries from the palace as to why your time both of these singular and very personal all of us. restored by her majesty the queen. the queen a queen asked me directly a person to person person to person that had a one on one. interview of her for her to find me for my work at the at the end of the tour and she asked me why i'd refuse the night i told her that it was because of my beliefs that i'm a republican and also a scottish nationalist so i couldn't accept almost from the british crown of what was for most of his reaction to that. she took a few seconds to digest it looks like the confused the been quite literally she

said she said how nice. a star badly action the toll is that but you're talking about a thought it wasn't a break the royalty because i knew you would have charge of prince charles this was a big and gala gathers for me in the continuing interest of yours and that too was judged a considerable success but was the one highly if you are in the impulse to one hundred one can in posting was really the general election of two thousand when joe buildings had been ruling the country for twenty years or more supposedly in the last eight years in the elected president although the country was still effectively pretty much a dictatorship in many ways and begin that period to an end and being very involved were different in the organization of the gun they intellects but that was for me the biggest highlight of my time and so the fun of as the source of my most of the spate turning down royal orders nonetheless it was to be set for the glittering that were my attic earlier after your success judged in poland and ghana you

appointed an ambassador and you there live for this. is that sudden comment them into reach that your bust of to us back a star you know and the embassy it task and you're in your early forty's you've got twenty years or more of foreign office activity before you the expectation as one of the youngest ambassadors in the whole service is you would end up as a bastard in washington not powerless of which the very heights of the foreign office so you must of thought that your arrived to take up your post i'm pretty well set for the. glistening prices that's probably true i mean i was for youngest and bus to my appointment i was anticipating probably my next appointment to the potent given had been to a great expense to teach me and i'd probably finish as i'm busted to to do something along those lines was by. another clear. myself knows every reason to believe it was going to happen.

but politicians do something. they put themselves on the line to get accepted or rejected. so when you want to be president. or somehow want to. have to go right to the press this is like the full three of them all can't be good . i'm interested always in the waters of our. city. but when the first century both of. them saw elements of the state and the moment. people would like to see interact through the tape which is happening to the individual and using their judges through facebook through to another interacting with political events. to. be seeing the results.

a recent report from the u.k.'s foreign office highlights in detail the persecution of christians around the world in the middle east the cradle appreciate to be christians face extinction why is that deep politically incorrect in the west foundational religion. welcome back alex is interviewing top ten political blogger critic marty we take up the story with critical survived an uzbek a stun as the youngest ambassador in the whole of the british foreign office

however the idealistic diplomat is a bit too kind to the world of reality polity. you are confronted and scared and there's becker stand with. this which are increasing with trouble just so how did what where were these things that were going on and how did you take it i hadn't been there very long when i discovered that they'd have a dictatorship which was running as because stan was a dreadful dictatorship and they were they were practicing torture of the most horrible kind and then i discovered that we were known gauged in security service cooperation with them and were deceiving intelligence material from these torture sessions when you see we mean the united kingdom security forces under foreign office yeah i mean essentially the cia and then my six were deceiving intelligence material from years back that came from these torture sessions but when this was suddenly the aftermath of nine eleven the the iraq war was on its way this was

a table of international terrorism of al-qaeda rampant i mean don't you judge well you know these are exceptional tames of perhaps exceptional measures might be justified in that context i think if the main point stance about the first one is oh i think torture is just always a model and to never be resorted to the second one is that of course this kind of behavior is what makes people hate us and what causes terrorism as opposed to stop it and the third and they particle one is you don't get the truth from torturing people under torture people will say anything to make the torture stop and what the torture wants to hear is not necessarily be true and what the torturers wanted to hear in this case work infections the membership of al-qaeda in order to exaggerate the strength of the in central asia in order to justify all the hundreds of millions of dollars being pumped into the g.g.

by the united states so the material coming out of it was false material so your first of course. was to be representations of the temple the image of the ambassador you must have had access to the top of the foreign office access perhaps to the farm sector but there was jack straw was of course so you must to me this internal representation of what was of the storms to their own mylan tash caped saying look things are not as they seem here i'm increasingly troubled looking for direction as to hope we can steer things into a more honorable course i did exactly that i sent telegrams back to judge to all members of the camp marked top secret saying we are receiving this intelligence from a tour material from torture it's under libel material we shouldn't be getting it and it's illegal in terms of the un convention against torture to receive this material and i'm concerned about the legal position ministers are putting

themselves in by receiving it i sent a telegram saying that at the end of two thousand and two and repeated it in january two thousand and three having this even though i answered and i was then called to london government get a witan answer i was called to monday to a meeting in the foreign office they first thing i was told was that the foreign office was angry with me because such things should never ever be put in writing so you would know we're i mean what was there any supporters of government in the hope that the vast developments that would be clear shot it was you. who were of well known radical views did you think of saying or will you not a lotus i'm biased of contact the international development bomb i'm not just told very firmly within the foreign office but jack straw had taken the view that we should get intelligence and torture in the context of the war on terror but this was necessary. i had very little support from within the foreign office at an

official level i had a fair amount of personal messages of support from other ambassadors but not. and the other colleagues in similar positions in the world there would have been many colleagues in the same position of and the world but nobody else seemed willing to put their career on the line about it in the way that i was willing to do so then you two very unusual step but still within the realms of proper foreign office behavior you made that open public criticism of the. judicial system was as bad as style and various other aspects that were going on and you did that as the ambassador and you cleared just through the front office. to get clear. that was quite hard work to get it cleared i decided that we had to go public on the human rights abuses but workers including one instance of that of a gentleman being boiled to death he was boiled alive literally and i've got

pathological proof of that from the university of glasgow institute of pathology so i decided we needed to go public and i went through both parts of the foreign office which deal with human rights and through defeated to clear crystal and was that this particular case of a sudden the being as you put it boiled alive but was that a feature or your speech or was it more generally a boat top job boat. illegal rendition which was an issue which was undergoing the speech didn't discuss bendish and it discussed the torture of what was happening and did give a specific example of a chap being boiled to death but also you see you had that confirmed by the university of glasgow was out when you were still ambassador was that later than there never was while i was still ambassador i'd received detailed photos of the corpse while i was ambassador and i sent voters back to perform the office to the human rights department of foreign office and they had sent them to me in the city

of glasgow for analysis the analysis and come back saying that the chap and been boiled alive so to say it was the. which caused a bit of a stir and brought you into a pretty open conflict with your american equivalent their manager wasn't particularly pleased with the activities of oh by the what happened then yeah you make i'm bust there was was most upset. and he called me to a meeting where we we discussed our different views and he took the view that islam is in itself an attack on human rights in effect was what he said to me and that i had to be allies that the government was fighting islam and that we should be giving them every support and that these minor human rights abuses were not the main thing i should be concentrating on i wasn't seeing the big picture was his view i also got quite a firm attack from london coming down from the minister's office saying that they

were most concerned i had upset our american allies i did point out that i had cleared the speech they were still not impressed they said they invade but i knew what i was doing i knew that i was going against wider policy objectives and then things took of together different and you folks yourself at the receiving end having been the person who was making the allegations making the statement at the receiving end of a foreign office investigation. that's right and. and it came as a huge shock to me that i was on holiday with my family and i was called back before the office to a meeting in the personnel department for office and at that meeting it was put to me that i was having policy conflicts with the office and perhaps i'd i'd rather go and be ambassador somewhere else and they suggest just to denmark they said that

copenhagen was coming up and wouldn't it be better for me if i just quietly went to copenhagen and before i could actually answer that they said take a couple of days to think about it but then the chap produced from a drawer of his desk a list of eighteen allegations and said if you don't agree then we're going to have to investigate these allegations and i was just absolutely stunned by b. the sheer bluntness of the blackmail but the lack of subtlety about it and these other cases but just absolute rubbish i knew just completely untrue things i'd never done i was astonished i was astonished this could be happening i actually encountered some psychological difficulties in believing this really was happening to me in the build world so you'd say to fate and you fought successfully the charges were dismissed but your career was was over your career in the former office was all of that is that of going to the glittering hates of the moscow

embassy or or elsewhere or that there was the finish of that. what did you pick yourself up with as a considerable thing to happen in your mid forty's in mid career under circumstances most of you a great deal in points of hope and it was very very difficult i went through a period of great poverty and i don't come that any sense from a moneyed background that i had no other source of income. and on top of which. the vents precipitated a divorce everything collapsed on me i lost my lost my job i lost by family i lost my income i lost my standing in society i lost my faith in the speech because as i say the people doing this to me were my friends i've been in the office for over twenty years and over an awful lot of people who knew me. very well knew that the allegations against b.

were one two and that was eventually proven yet still in sort of went along with the official line i was an unreliable tobel person and needed to be got rid of so but the whole psychological experience of it was very very difficult to come out of and for. a year or two i was very down indeed you have support on and and across party support will mention clear sure. daniel hannan the conservative un peu these were people who were suspicious of what happened to you and were advocates in your field that's true. michael portillo also quite quite a few people in the conservative party. were very supportive but there were people across political lines who did come out to my support one of the very difficult things was that once i'd been sacked in effect i felt able to go public on the things i've been keeping secret like the extraordinary rendition that was happening

but jack straw stood up in parliament and referring me to me by name i said but it wasn't true and extraordinary rendition didn't exist and it was a figment of imagination and he said but you know you would have to believe that the americans and the british were colluding in sending people to bend the world to be tortured and i was in effect being called a liar in parliament. and that's you know extremely difficult to cope with now of course i haven't met anybody for a decade who doesn't believe me and doesn't believe i was the one telling the truth but at that time it wasn't straightforward and so as the if part the ambassador has undergone total press the writ as the high price of political principle. and next week shall we find out how his fight back came a bite in a totally unexpected way the largest number of us i've ever had for an individual article was one point two million on my own blog and you must remember that of

course you can multiply that because popular articles always reproduced all over the be into that join us next week for the second chapter and the personal story of the top radical blogger create bike for ny for me and all of the team here at the alex salmond show you will see. in the if

i am i. or anyone. after the previous stage 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 field where everything is familiar on the other i wanted a new challenge and a fresh perspective and i'm used to surprising them by salt or not so you think. i'm going to talk about football not the or else you can think i was going to go.

by the way ways that that's life here. in. russia marks the seventy fourth anniversary of the end of the second world war as massive crowds march through central moscow in a tribute to their loved ones who lived through and perished in the conflict while on red square. fit the victory day parade it took center stage in their thursday morning with more than thirteen thousand troops and dozens of armored vehicles passing through the iconic site. and other news iran sets out its nuclear deal ultimatum forcing european leaders.