wilson $1320.00 until the 1960 s. i as an arbroath ian was taught that it was a declaration of scottish independence or robert it's only relatively recently that they are both left was termed a declaration a toll once declarations of independence became common in the modern world scotland just got the it bit quicker than the rest but tell ever it's termed it's a hugely significant document for scotland and the world maybe whiten and more the lack of national celebrations for the 700 anniversary maybe says why haven't the concepts and ideals in the declaration ever been adopted into law by hollywood i'm also sure that there were no commemorative events brought forward by hollywood to celebrate this anniversary and says gutted not much celebration of this important anniversary it should be said however that there were a range of local events planned with some support but the public response to the programs and films that have been made indicate something more national and international is called for next year for the 701st anniversary so you parson says

billy joel thank you for celebrating the declaration of arbroath and its role in establishing the democratic rights of humankind scotius says what's a 1000000000 show given the circumstances thank you so much such brilliant interesting guests as well louis says nice to see the decentralization of television studios to louie's of course is referring to alex filming from stricken patricia says very interesting back in the folks in india as an editor at least in the dislike of politeness being dumped in scotland without our permission was the start of a new weakening in scotland that has grown since they've even says it blast from the past in more ways than one ted cabin was my 1st scottish history to shoot at emory university many many moons ago he spoke about mist and realities of history and i remember it to the city people are says excellent show great to see and listen to billie kate learning a lot about scottish history lenny says what a great show alex i was so disappointed that the march in our both was cancelled to your shoe really cheered me up. we asked the author of pandemic century dot them

up one expose him as to his view of the coming few really this is what he had to say then there is something old about this forest the way it seems to be is a very subtle virus a very wily virus if you think about a good strategy for a virus to spread wild worldwide is actually not to make many people sick right in darwinian terms a virus will succeed if it gets through all our controls the best way it can do that is the spread of the radar by not causing overt illness so that's what it's doing and today he joins me from west london not the whole mix but. pandemics through history i'm interested in particular in this sure but the economic impact of the pandemic through history they have something to teach us about the likely economic consequences of this medical and human disaster. well yes and the so if you look to you know the spanish influenza pandemic that occurred

just as over 100 years ago quite uncanny the historical timings that occurred during world war so of course of the completely different economic and geopolitical situation nonetheless we know that the economic impact of the pandemic were profound and depressed g.d.p. substantially not just in the u.k. and europe but in the united states and north america but interestingly because the pandemic and this is true i'm afraid of all pandemics they tend to take out not just people but they tend to sort of remove the unhealthiest and the least able members of the population what that means after with that there's a kind of bounce back in terms of people who are left you know tend to be more healthy and robust so what you kind of lose economically you make up for in the

same savings on health costs later so could that be said rather of callous and capitation that some of the less productive people be removed could that really of been behind the government it tinkling were for at least contemplating the so-called help the military strategy isn't really in the and government people who think quite as callously as that all of those are much more a case of just lack of clear thinking and charting a way forward i think it's more is more a case of the government realizing well i think 1st they didn't really have a plan i think the 1st thing that's become clear the 2nd thing is although we were told repeatedly by boris johnson that he was following the science the famous quote . what we now know is the science there was conflicting scientific opinion and he

chose to listen to one scientific advisors who i think there is evidence was swayed by the idea that the mistake they really made this important to understand alex is all the modeling that had been done up to now was based on an influenza pandemic ok that was the template for their response and influenza we know is very very difficult to stop it spreading once once you know it is a threat is probably already here i don't that was not true of corona virus coronaviruses a different virus and spreads differently and there was an opportunity which we missed to. stop it much more vigorously than at the borders but after it got in we could have imposed you much more testing and chase down those contacts in the contacts of the contacts if we'd done that i think we would have seen much lower rates of infection and hospitalizations. more in the german

model so that wasn't done so that left us with little choice but to sort of muddle along and i think it's quite possible that they flirted with this herd immunity i think we're still flattered with i think we've got a defacto herd immunity strategy because if i step outside my front door in london i can still see lots of people walking too close to one another job is a bit to kill or running right up close to people ignoring whether they're elderly or not that is that the fact of unity strategy and finally dumped a whole. will anything ever be the same again. well listen i this is a really tough conversation that i'm having with my daughter now i think is very very challenging and i think this is a big difference in 1900 so the 918 pandemic is why did known by historians as the forgotten pandemic because although many millions of people died worldwide it

didn't have the sort of profound impacts that we think this pandemic is and is already having i think it will simply because it's going to calls such a major economic depression for that fact alone i think it will be well remembered dr holland smiles from west london thank you very much indeed thank you alex. so one of the economic impact of this pandemic if forced to europe were thought to your smallest country dr stephanie for believe the university of malta dr fabry malta has been praised by the world health organization for its efforts to contain the pandemic. succeeding and is that situation likely to continue i'm very proud to say that the world her to organization has raised more and more that are up till now and can be seen as a best practice case study in terms of managing to spend them ik our health system

has always been and still is impeccable and we have an extremely talented health stuff the priority at the moment is difficult of the society so the priority is flattening the curve as much as possible so we need to think long term if women is to flatten the cave in the long term we will be able to reestablish our economy in a more efficient way faster so we think long term i think there is a win win situation between the economy and social well being a doctor from the e.u. and other multis economists this week of published a major report called joe which looks forward to the best poly sci prescriptions to take more time than the elsewhere in europe out of the covert crisis published your aim behind the publication of that report and what its major recommendations which over the past 2 weeks together with the theme of young economists we've been

working really hard to review the local context we have interviewed various stakeholders social partners business leaders and we also did our consumer survey to take stock of the current situation for the present situation we are saying that there should be 4 way we should address 4 is the fiscal delete the. administrative and the more nitty the fiscal we are proposing additional measures such as tax credits to companies who do not lay off workers and additional government revenue from for example tax to cover for deeds incentives tax on single use plastic submission the taxes on plastic packaging sweetened products and so on. with regard to the legal measures we are saying that certain aspects of the law should be covered to cater for the current situation like for example the employment law the companies act which respect to liquidation and. vincy and the

financial crime review then we are proposing for the current situation. administrative measures we are saying that the government may become be more efficient by deploying. human resources from departments that are not so busy at the moment to other departments that are very busy with respect to implementing the incentives put forward by government finally we are saying that. there are a specter of want to policy which we should also look at now you might tell me want to policy in more than it is in the hands of the e c b but to the more the development bank plays an important role in this and you are saying that there could be schemes that are more to the green economy digitalisation and promoting startups as with then we have a set of measures post prove it for immediately post-school that we are saying that

there should be discussions ongoing us from now to establish a recovery plan for when the economy can do starts the discussions should take place between the main stakeholders and also government. thinking from the perspective of europe smallest country no continent what do you think really european. in central bank a promise in the sort 'd of scale of economic bazookas which will meet police scale of this crisis yes so up till now. the crisis affected the different countries in the e.u. and print way and it hit us abruptly so the individual countries had no option but basically to implement their individual incentives when you take stock of these incentives they are more or less coherent so they target funds to civil protection

to health care and to address liquidity issues in the meantime in the european central bank was asking for the commend ations from the individual countries to offer a holistic plan and 500000000000 package was launched last fish could have there been more incentives and when looking at countries like italy i think their protests have been more incentives with regards to solidarity good to have done more maybe yes however there when you consider the fact that the e.u. is made up of different countries with different economic visions in the way different characteristics same sex at all i think that it takes longer to come with a holistic plan to identify a holistic plan or to get day. however i believe that a more proactive on the fish interest forms is required from from the e.u. in general at the moment we are proposing to companies to revamp we are

just there contingency planning just in case something like this would happen and i think that a new level we need to do the same we need to he had just our contingency planning so that got for a bit of the crisis happens maybe not to this extent we will be much more ready to. adjust accordingly dr stephanie for briefer malta thank you very much and thank you very much alex thank you. joining us off the. professor david blanchflower college of the likely policy of the sponsor of both the federal reserve and the bank of england well let me the scale of the crisis join us. stumped a man who has used. that same. design

to not. just to. show. you put it's not just. so that we stop. thinking of getting a coupon we want to be god in your shoes no problem why did no one still use traps in this time you know why are you going near the crate with him he will just. freaking out when it's pretty much anywhere near. breeding dogs or caged in human

conditions on puppy farm i mean 67 years you know they've been locked up in a cage outside you see no protection from the weather the heat you know the courtier the rain the snow the funder they have no protection. because you. get 2 kids. across the u.s. cruel puppy mills are supported by dog shows and pet stores most of the poppies are coming from these large scale factory farming kind of pop. good businesses are involved. there's been a shocking amount of the organized opposition to efforts to increase the standards of care for dogs in commercial breeding so many most of that opposition is coming from other cultural groups and industries that have nothing to do with dogs don't buy dog. prefer something or blanch well as a former member of the monetary policy committee of the bank of england that's been

a leading in french and critic of the weakness of polish for the spawns to the great recession of 10 years ago how does he assess the likely policy of the sponsor and both sides of the atlantic to the couple of covert crisis is it going to meet the scale of the emergency that joins me from. the 1st. you trenchant critic of the weakness of policy response over the last 10 years to the great recession and out of you did that for a long unemployment underemployment high levels what's your assessment. of the policy response in the united states and the united kingdom to the great pandemic. well i think the only word i can use is exemplary in the sense that they absolutely go off it and so i guess i would say that in 2008

eventually policy make is to slowly through the kitchen sink at it what we see in the last month is policy making through the kitchen at it so they've reacted very quickly i mean in the u.k. the several trenches that's going on in the us as well but i think about the original part of your question i don't think the economists were in very good shape to take the shock that was coming and that was because of very bad policy austerity policy that that you thought about and you and i both oppose for a very long time and just think in the end i and the united kingdom real wages at the start of this pandemic in march 2023 percent lower than they were in 2008 so yes we have seen a fantastically rapid enormous response but the economy is themselves we're much weaker than they shouldn't be. if policy it's been appropriate post

2008 so yes they've they learned their lesson this time and i was teaching my class that yesterday about how appalling it was in 2008 so they've learned that lesson but times are looking pretty tough and i certainly think the united states looks like the unemployment rate already is about 20 percent maybe that close to in canada as well so this is this is a very very sharp tough town but they have done well conditional on the fact that for 20 years they terribly so the numbers coming fall out from the treasury in the bank of england in the u.k. and from the fed and from the federal government and the united states looks pretty impressive as a danger of the the best laid schemes of mice and men going to have to go in because already we see sharply rising unemployment in the united states and we see small businesses in the united kingdom say they can't see where the money is

because it's not reach them. well i think i would have think that's part of it i mean in a sense the scale of the problem the starting point was weak and the speed that this thing is has come with and has meant that the scale of the response is unprecedented but i think the way you ask the question unprecedented but not enough so there's a very awful picture we're seeing in san antonio texas where a food bank in texas opened a couple couple of days ago and there are 10000 cars lined up the huge park it looks like a dealership and then a 4 mile line of cars trying to get food people keep the money hasn't come despite the fact that we say the government has responded people haven't got the money to get food i mean there's just a series of surveys going out now around the world asking people if you had a if you lost your job today and you lost reagan which many have how long could you

laugh with the money that you've got the answer is about 2 weeks following that going to the people say a couple of weeks or so so now what's happened is ok this money is coming. in the u.s. the ira started to put money out yesterday but many people probably won't get any money until the full well the there's the problem yeah the response is high but where's the money where how my going to pay the bill how am i going to pay my rent how am i going to pay for the food so i think these are 2 issues we're going to see islands how are people going to pay their rent and and how and how are they going to get food and you rightly say how the small business going to survive i mean estimates in the united states are despite all of this and this maybe of this may be too much but the estimates i've seen suggest that perhaps half the restaurants in the united states because of all this mostly small business it's a basic going to close. so it's impossible that the spite of the monsoonal human misery being cold caused by covert 19. human mentally caused by

a prolonged depression would be even greater. well that could be so and so i mean i think there's a policy response that we can look at and obviously this the likelihood is that may well be long term damage done i think the answer though is then there's this pressure in various countries in austria and in the end in the u.s. we've seeing every day this pressure to open this pressure to open the economy because you say as you rightly just suggest that the danger from the account from what's happened to the economy is so substantial but the danger of opening too soon and spreading the virus and killing more more people is is is great i think perhaps we should go back to the original ways that it's up in 2008 the world was unprepared for a financial crisis. in 2020 they were unprepared for basically

a health crisis and so now we're playing catch up and all the responses that we've seen which i thought were exemplary but that's not going to be enough they're probably going to do the same thing next month and the month afterwards and so with the things that we think around thinkable is that over the decade or so the world policymakers have been utterly unprepared they haven't had stocks of macs and downs and and in 2008 they wonder whether banks were going to fail and i remember talking to you when you were the 1st minute we thought a bit about where are the shovel ready projects or if you need to do something where are they what's the list the thing that you've got the answer to is the history of preparedness and there's a huge implications of banks failing on people and now this huge implications on the economy of the health of a health crisis that the policy makers were unprepared for and the what's the other thing we should talk about in the way that there's going to be distributional consequences who are the ones who lose the most and the answer is the young the

least educated the ones with the lowest incomes and the ones that hurt last time the same ones are going to be hurt this time and the boom didn't help them that much so they're still as a sustained economic response to the scale of this human crisis can we avoid too much damage to the the fabric can grow for the one of the colonies. well hopefully i mean obviously you're trying to buy time to isolate this virus you're trying to. stay at home waters are protected in time to get. the vaccine the reality of free market economics the 1st time you don't realize you have to give up your plan is from mike tyson quote when you get punched in the face so you've been punched in the face and then need to respond and you may need to respond for a long time and that and the question is will the policy makers understand that you've got to keep going because they didn't understand in 2010 and press apply to

this enormous human misery on a planetary scale and out of this economic crisis on a global scale is it possible that the right policy prescriptions the a column a which america is would have some beneficial aspects to it pretty tough to be really positive right now but i think there are going to be long term adjustments but the problem is we need we need to have a plan for the post pandemic and we don't know what that is it's going to hit us very hard so i think the answer is that yeah fundamental changes may come but we don't have a plan but we've been punched in the face and it's going to be hard to work out exactly what that is i suspect there will be long term fundamental change to the economy and we're going to have to have resources ready for potentially the next pandemic that is. a guiding light for policymakers across the planet dani

what would that be right in your message to policymakers and to lastly want to be allowed to meet the scale of this crisis. you know if you're you're not taught over the years i guess we i guess i like the great soccer analogy right retaliation in 1st get ready to the only issue right now all is to do too little i mean i just think as i said you throw the kitchen sink at the thing let's get in there and do everything at the scale of this shock is so immense because remember i think the other thing is that i look back i remember gordon brown once told me he wrote a great book he told me that that we had always seem elated what would happen if a single bank failed so each of the countries a thought about you know what if r.b.s. what is the bank of america and he said we are not the mistake we made was not to think about what happened when the global banking system failed and i think the big

thing here is that people seem to be thinking too much on the on a single country level if you ask the question about germany but germany has to remember that austria and sweden and new zealand and australia and india and and so this is a global this is a global crisis and i think the only thing i would say to people is the only issue i think you're going to do is to not do enough it's really hard to think that doing too much with be a fix to this get money to the people that money's the people as fast that you can and keep bringing it to them and then eventually we can get back to that we can get back to the reality of the logic would be supposin scotland was invaded by the vikings or something or other what would you do you will say well we can't be with them because you know it's going to take a while to get the parliament together and you know this is this think of it all as being on a war setting get ready go it's not it's not on your mark get that it's like red

light green light go that's what i would say the people go 1st so they're banned from florida thank you very much and they'd go through. for much of the 20th century the the great economic debate was between the upheavals of 2 totaling economists and john maynard keynes a milton friedman there would he have continued if struggle for policy domination at least in the liberal democracies for most of the 70 the 2nd half of the 20th century now it's a little in fact that these 2 great economists actually agreed on one thing they agreed that the could be an economic event so cataclysmic the end justified an economic and particular monetary policy despond some government way outside the normal parameters the cope with crisis is such an event and this on the level of response from governments is going to determine the economic future basically and

less government some prefer to open up the printing presses and beyond the experience of previous experience then recession will indeed come into depression and it's going to be on the scale of that response and that's coordination worldwide they'll make the difference between recession and depression and will make the difference between prolonged economic misery to add to the human messily the world is already experiencing and so forth has been on myself and all of the sure it's good bye for now and we'll see you next week.

i don't. see the leap from the sea i'm fine it can be said usually they don't believe it's going. to take a little shuts off the next don't. get somebody shot 60 feet. short of the.

end of. the headlines this hour the u.n. children's fund warns of a potential measles outbreak with youngsters missing their vaccines due to the covert 19 lockdown we hear from the unicef chief and to me and i say. views a $117000000.00 children that we espied me and are going to miss over millions of the birds in asia and moscow and dreams to be rescheduled. from flying medics in the united states said the lives are being put at risk by the government's failure to supply hospitals with protective equipment. and small business owners in france say the newly extended lockdown could force them out of business leaving millions of people out of work.